On Earth as in Heaven
by Cue.Card
Summary: White didn't know what she'd been getting into when she took the Light Stone from Lenora. She didn't know that in a few months' time, she'd be fighting to keep some of the most fearsome trainers and awesome Pokémon alive. Game-centric.  Bit of everything.
1. Prologue

**A/N: **Ready for the long haul? I am. =3 Also, the point of view is White's (female protagonist of Pokémon Black/White) for all future chapters unless otherwise stated.

**Warning: **Major spoilers for the end of Pokémon Black/White lie herein. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer: **I own the scenario. Other than that, I've gone and taken a bunch of characters owned by other people, and stuck them together to see what would happen. It's like one big party.

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**On Earth as in Heaven**

**Prologue**

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We were there.

We were on the Ferris Wheel.

The very top of the Ferris Wheel, really.

Yeah, we were there.

The night everything went down.

The day the world went black.

Oh, we were there, all right.

We were there, the night everything we ever knew disappeared.

The day the Earth was taken off its course.

We were there.

And even now, when I close my eyes, I can still see the light in N die.


	2. Track 01: Seems Like You're Fading

**A/N: **We have a lovely blend of English and Japanese names for Generation 5 Pokémon at the moment... I've used the English name if it has been released, but otherwise, my fall back is still the Japanese. I'm sorry! I'll switch all names to the English versions when all the names have been released. If I've missed some, I apologize. Also, I just have this fascination with the name 'White' over 'Touko'… Hopefully this isn't too annoying. =3

**Warning: **Major spoilers for the end of Pokémon Black/White lie herein. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer: **I own the scenario. Other than that, I've gone and taken a bunch of characters owned by other people, and stuck them together to see what would happen. It's like one big party.

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**On Earth as in Heaven**

**Chapter 1 – Seems Like You're Fading**

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The Pokéball rocked once…

My heart started to hammer a tattoo in my chest, blood pounding behind my ears so loudly I could hear nothing else. I was shaking with anticipation, ecstasy already running through my veins like wildfire. I could barely keep my glee in check.

Oh, I was going to do it this time. I was going to catch this Blitzle.

And about bloody time, too.

I'd only spent my entire day, from breakfast until now, tracking her down Route 3. And when I say tracking, I mean good, old-fashioned tracking. On my belly, crawling through mud, tracking. Through thick and thin, tracking. Through tree branches that had ripped half my hair out, tracking. None of that high tech tracking equipment some trainers used for me.

I was never going to get the mud stains out of my shirt, I was pretty sure I'd need to disinfect the gash on my leg at least twice, and my hair… well, it was never going to be the same again.

But none of that really mattered, because this time, I was going to catch her. That seventy-five dollars' worth of Pokéballs I'd run through? Yeah. Best investment I'd ever made.

The Pokéball rocked twice…

This was the high I lived for, right here. Better than any drug. These were the moments I lived for. These moments, these moments between ultimate triumph and failure, between the life and death of a dream, between the dawn and ruin of reality. These moments between black and white.

These moments took my breath away. They made time freeze, made my heart hammer, made adrenaline race through my veins, made the whole world make sense, made me feel _alive_. These moments that culminated all my hard work – all my Pokémon's hard work. These moments that summed up everything I'd spent two years working for.

Everything came down to these moments. The whole world – or my whole world, anyway – shrunk down to this place on Route 3, the Pokéball rocking in the grass, this moment. This _one_ moment. Today. The now.

This one moment defined who I was. It defined who my Pokémon were. I lived for it. I lived for this moment, this high, these Pokémon. That's right. I lived for Pokémon. And sometimes, they lived for me, too.

Such was my life. And I didn't regret a minute of it.

The Pokéball rocked three times…

This was it.

I could feel my heart already begin to soar.

She was mine, all right.

My Serperior was coiled up around himself in the grass beside me, watching the rocking Pokéball unblinkingly with his sharp snake eyes. He looked as though he was willing it to stop – I wouldn't be surprised if that one look from him made it stop, either, such was the intensity of it.

Serperior had been through the thick and thin of things with me today and was no doubt looking for a snake-nap. He was even more anxious than I was to have this Blitzle caught. Sometimes I wasn't sure if that was because it was what _I_ wanted, or what _he_ wanted. Maybe it was both.

"_Here it is_," I hissed excitedly between clenched teeth as the Pokéball just started to tip back for the fourth (and, fingers crossed, final) time. Any second now, it would stop, and Blitzle would be _mine_. Any second now…

_Briiiiiiiiiing_. _Briiiiiiiiiing_.

I was shocked back into reality all at once, and I blinked stupidly, looking around, stunned, to see what had made the noise. Then it hit me. _I _was making that god-awful sound. Or my Xtransceiver was, anyway…

It was ringing.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no, no! This kind of thing did not just happen when I was about to catch a Pokémon. It just didn't. It couldn't. It… it defied some physics law or something. It had to. It must have been a figment of my imagination. No one could possibly be calling me right now. The thought was simply _ludicrous_.

_Briiiiiiiiiing_. _Briiiiiiiiiing_.

Damn. It really was ringing, wasn't it?

Frick.

I did _not_ want to have to pick it up – I was _busy_ for god's sake! – but I also knew that it was probably Professor Juniper. She was the only one who _ever_ called in the middle of the day. Usually to ask me to do something for her.

Sad fact numero uno: I couldn't really refuse to help her. The woman had given me my Snivy two years ago. I owed the woman. I owed her my life, really. If it hadn't been for her decision to give me Snivy, I'd be wasting my days away in college, studying. Instead, I had this life. This amazing, wonderful life I adored. Where every day was a new adventure, every day I had I duty, every day ended in an accomplishment.

The short and narrow of it was, if she asked for a lung, I'd give it to her.

If that weren't enough, I also knew she'd flay me alive if I didn't pick up. I'd been on the receiving end of more than one responsibility lecture from her, and given the choice, I'd avoid any in future. She'd want to know how Serperior was doing, how 'Shram was doing, what I'd been up to, what my plan was for the next fifty years…

She was kind of motherly like that – and not in a good, I-need-to-cry-my-eyes-out-and-be-babied kind of way. In the why-haven't-you-done-your-laundry-yet kind of way. I got that enough from my own mother, I didn't need it from Juniper, too.

Not that I could blame her – if I'd given a fourteen-year-old a Pokémon, I'd want to make sure it hadn't died of starvation, too. One too many goldfish had gone that way.

Juniper never called me for no good reason – it was always something important. After all, she never knew just what she could be interrupting. One Gym match had taught her that well enough (though from what I'd gathered she'd gotten worse from Cheren once… but that's beside the point).

"Frick," I swore. I didn't have a choice. I'd have to pick up.

Swearing fluently, I dug one hand into the back slung over my shoulder, feeling around blindly for my Xtransceiver. My bag was like one big black hole – everything went in it, but nothing ever really found its way back out.

I fingered a deck of playing cards… then a broken poker chip… lip gloss… nail file… Aspirin… Pokédex… I started identifying things by feel. It was really the only hope I had of finding my Sceiver. Next was the Vulpix lighter Black had given me for my birthday… the pack of Marlboro smokes my mother didn't need to know about… a few crumpled up dollar bills… guitar pick… a Leaf Stone (was _that_ where I'd put it?)… a stack of post-it notes from N…

Aha!

My hand curled around what was unmistakeably my still-ringing Sceiver, and I yanked it out of my bag. I hit the answer button at the same time, holding it up to my face. Anything to make that accursed ringing _stop_.

"Yo. What do you need done this time, Juniper?" I snapped a little impatiently before I even looked to see who it was calling me. The caster hadn't even connected properly yet. "I'm in the middle of something important, so make it quick," I added as an afterthought, keeping one eye on my Pokéball, which was _still_ teetering indecisively in the grass.

"Juniper?" A very _not_ middle-aged woman's voice sounded through the fuzz of my Sceiver. Evidently it had been more than a little damaged when I'd slipped and fallen on it this morning chasing after my Blitzle. "White? Is that you? Why don't you have the video turned on?"

Now that_ was_ a good question. All I had was a lot of black and white noise on my screen, and not a lot of anything else. I shook it as hard as I could, as though that would somehow help it connect, but the screen continued to be a field of static. Damn. How much would this cost to replace? Juniper would be royally pissed…

"I think I might have broken it," I admitted feebly, pursing my lips. I checked the one side to make sure the video _was_ turned on, and my heart sunk. Yep, definitely broken. The whole button was missing, and little short-circuited wires were sticking up through the hole the button had left in its place. Great. Just great.

"I swear, White," the voice chuckled bemusedly over my officially broken Sceiver. "Your technology rep is a thing of legend. You were going to break it at some point. I could've called it. This must be a new record for you – it's lasted what, two years? Longer than any flashlight you've ever owned."

Okay, so maybe I'd broken one or two things in my life. The blender had _not_ been my fault, and that iPod was broken when I'd gotten it. The digital camera was the fault of one (okay, maybe more than one) poorly placed rocks. N's flat screen was an accident – how was I to know he had a Kecleon on the floor? The laptop was an honest mistake, and everyone knew flashlights were made in mass and poorly designed, so was I to blame if they broke? I didn't think so.

So maybe I was a little clumsy at times. And maybe I avoided electricity like the plague. But wasn't that just better for everyone? I was an energy-saving _machine_. That's right. It was _all_ intentional. I was saving the planet.

… That was my story and I was sticking to it.

"Way to kick me when I'm down," I replied crisply with an indignant little sniff. "So maybe the video's out. It doesn't hurt to remember the days when vid calling didn't exist. It's a blast from the past. Speaking of, who is this, anyway?"

"It's N," my mysterious caller replied with a laugh. "Thought you'd be able to tell. How many people have your number, anyway? It can't be many," he continued. Oh, if _only_ he knew how many people had my number. A hell of a lot more than should would be a reasonable guess.

N. Oh, N. Why were you calling me now of all times? Maybe, in a life or death situation I could avoid talking to Juniper, but you? No, I could never not talk to you. We were too closely linked for that now. If I had to pinpoint one moment in my life I regretted, it was the moment I'd agreed to becoming a Hero like you.

"Not many," I lied through my teeth easily, using the chirpy little voice I always used when I talked to N. He didn't need to know he was the biggest regret of my life. "But it was a late night last night with Bianca, and I'm tired."

That wasn't strictly a lie. I _had_ been with Bianca. Or we'd been at the same party, anyway. And I was pretty sure she'd hailed me a taxi back to Nuvema Town once I'd gotten a little too tipsy. ... Or maybe that was Cheren… or Black… had Black come home with me? Something told me he had. But I couldn't remember the details.

"I see," he bought into my little white lie easily. He tended to do that, automatically assumed I was one hundred percent honest with him. Maybe sometimes I felt guilty about lying to him all the time – but it was for the best. N was… well, as far as guys went, he was pretty dang innocent. I felt like this was saying something as he was two years older than me.

He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I was a little less than perfect. He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I smoked a cig or two when I was stressed. He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I got plastered on nights out with Cheren, Bianca, and Black. He was happier not knowing that once and a while me and Black maybe got a little _too_ close. Because those were things I was sure N would never, ever do.

There were other things, too, but the other things he could understand. He could understand that I caught Pokémon, even if he didn't like it. He could understand that I made them fight, but that they _wanted_ to fight for me. He could understand those things. Because those things involved Pokémon. It was the relations between humans, and the things I needed as a _human_, I knew he wouldn't accept.

So was it so bad that I just didn't tell him?

I didn't think so.

"Anyway, you said you were busy with something important? Is it really all that important or can I borrow you tonight?" He continued, completely unaware of the expression of pure disdain that had fallen over my face at his very suggestion.

I bit my lip at N's request and raked a hand through my tangled hair. _Could he borrow me tonight_? What kind of question was that? It wasn't like I had a choice. When he said jump, I didn't have much choice but to ask how high. But tonight? I needed to be out training my new Blitzle –

… Oh.

When I looked back up over my Sceiver, it was to see a very open Pokéball lying in the grass, with no sign of my Blitzle in sight. Serperior was giving me a disappointed kind of look that just screamed, _You should know better, White. Next time, don't answer that stupid little piece of metal you insist you carry around with you._

"Fu – damn it," I caught myself, but still snapped angrily. "Damn it, damn it, damn it." I could kick myself. Why the hell had I picked up? I could've phoned N back right away (if I remembered, that was), but no. Instead, I'd lost my shot at catching my perfect little Blitzle. Why not, right? It wasn't like I'd spent my whole day trying to catch her or anything.

"What happened?" N asked over the Sceiver, and it took every ounce of self-restraint I had not to snap right back, _You happened_. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from screaming and balled my free hand into a fist so hard I could feel my nails begin to break the skin.

_It's not N's fault_, _it's not N's fault_, I told myself like a mantra. _Don't you dare snap at him, White. You were the one who was a complete and total idiot, not him. You can take all the credit for that one yourself._ But damn was that ever hard.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter," I replied instead. My jaw clenched despite myself, and I felt ready to hurt someone. Still, my mind was screaming, _Why the hell did you have to call now of all times, N? Why now? _"And no, it isn't important. At least not anymore. What did you have in mind?"

I could practically hear the smile in his voice. He was such a child. Happy over the smallest of things, I swear. It wasn't like he didn't know I would make time for him if he asked for it. "You, me, Nimbasa City, amusement park, half an hour?"

"Deal, so long as you're buying," I replied easily. Now that I had no Blitzle to show for my hard spent cash, I was feeling a little bitter. Not to mention broke. Besides, I'd just seen N three days ago; there was no way I needed to see him again so soon. I usually had _at least_ a week between visits. What had happened to that, huh?

"Don't I always?" He replied rhetorically with a little laugh in his voice. "Anyways, bring your Sceiver. I'll see if I can fix it. And Reshiram, bring her along too."

I thought these were two of the stupidest comments I'd ever heard. Bring my Sceiver? Of course I would. If it was on me now, it was going to be on me in half an hour. I'd barely be able to get to Nimbasa City in half an hour as it was. What was I going to do, stash it in an old tree log en route or something?

And bring along 'Shram? Wasn't bringing her along kind of the whole point of this little venture? Besides, he knew she was my only Flying type. She was the only way I was even going to get to Nimbasa City in half an hour.

"And… I'll see you there, White. I miss you when you're gone, you know," he finished.

I felt a blush work its way into my cheeks despite myself. N could be brutally honest sometimes, but at the same time, I was sure he didn't mean anything by it. There was something just plain different about N. It made him incredibly difficult to read. What exactly was different about N? Well, if I tried to put words to it, it would be that he didn't always act… well… _human_.

"Sure thing," I muttered back halfheartedly, but he'd already hung up.

I sighed heavily, raking a hand through my hair again, working my fingers through the knots. This was not part of the plan for the day. Not at all. Especially now, when I looked like shit because I'd spent all day tracking that _stupid_ Blitzle. I didn't want to go out now, thanks. I wanted a shower, that was what I wanted.

But that really wasn't an option – not anymore, anyway. Oh, no. If I had known being a Hero would screw up my life so badly, I never would have taken that Light Stone from Lenora all those long months ago.

There wasn't much point in dwelling on it now. What was done was done. All that was left was the price to pay.

"Return, Serperior," I muttered in a defeated kind of way, shoving my Sceiver back in my bag and grabbing hold of both Serperior's and Reshiram's Pokéballs from my belt. Serperior was still looking decidedly unimpressed with me for having let the Blitzle get away.

"Don't give me that. You know the situation," I told him defensively as I recalled him. "When it comes down to Reshiram and Zekrom, you've got about as much choice as I do. And that's none. When the Lord calls, we can't do much but answer."

_I don't like it either_, I added mentally. _If I could get rid of 'Shram, stick her back in that stupid little Light Stone, bury her hundreds – no, thousands – of feet down in the ground so she could never come back again, believe me, Serperior, I would. I'd be the first one to do it. But it would never work, and she'd just come back thousands of times worse than she already is._

"Come on, Reshiram, the Lord calls," I continued quickly, wiping the thought from my mind as I threw Reshiram's Pokéball out. I'd played over more scenarios than I could count, on how I could get rid of Reshiram. I felt terrible for having these thoughts, but I couldn't help it. I hated her. Truly, truly, I hated her, and I hated everything she stood for even more.

She was marvelous to look at, Reshiram; easily the most exquisite Pokémon I'd ever seen. I mean really stunning. She looked like a swan, snow white and pure, with a regal look in her eye and stature. She moved like she walked on air, all flowing and graceful. In fact, I wouldn't be exactly surprised if she _did_ walk on air. Like a little angel, all pure, and pampered, and perfect.

But damn, did she have one hell of a temper to contend with.

"Looks like we're off to Nimbasa City this time," I told her easily as she materialized a few feet away. She was watching me closely with her too-bright eyes. It felt a little as though she were glaring at me. Sometimes I got the feeling that she liked me about as much as I liked her: not at all.

"Going to go see your old pal, Zekrom. I know how much you just _love_ that," I continued, ignoring the piercing look I was getting. I was pretty sure she hated Zekrom about as much as I did, too. But what did I know? Maybe she _loved_ seeing Zekrom.

It just seemed about as likely as that Celebi myth my mom used to tell me at bedtime.

Reshiram snorted and tendrils of flame leapt from her flared nostrils. Evidently, she agreed. Seeing Zekrom was not exactly her idea of a great time, either. She ruffled her wings a little, like the very thought made her feel dirty, and gave me a look that said the same thing. Luckily, I was plenty used to her attitude.

Nevertheless, she did turn around and lower her wings a little, glancing back at me expectantly over her shoulder as if to say, _Fine. You might as well get on, foolish little two-legger_.

"Thanks, 'Shram," I acknowledged with a little bob of my head. I knew she probably expected me to get down on my knees and worship her for her benevolence. Or at least curtsy. But I'd shoot myself before I did anything like that.

As it was, I bit my tongue hard having to thank her at all. While I was willing to flirt with her temper, I wasn't quite prepared to just ignore her. Even if I _did_ have control over her, technically, I doubted that would stop her from incinerating me to a crisp if I put another toe out of line.

Thank God Reshiram understood the whole situation with N and Zekrom as well as I did. Otherwise, all of Unova – no, probably the whole world – would be in deep, deep shit by now.

All things considered, you'd think she'd give me a little cooperation. But no. She just acted like a spoiled brat. I guess being a legendary dragon gave you some kind of rights I didn't know about. Right to burn down entire forests on a whim, right to drop your trainer from hundreds of feet in the air (don't laugh; it's happened… more than once)… that kind of thing.

Did I _want_ to ride her all the way to Nimbasa City? No, not really. That would be like wanting to break all the bones in my right arm.

But I didn't have much of a choice, now, did I? So it was that I didn't hesitate to vault lightly up on her back, despite my obvious qualms of trusting Reshiram with my life. I was doubly careful not to bend any of her feathers the wrong way (I knew from experience that she'd throw me right away if I did) as I settled on her back, my legs in front of her haunches and just behind her wing joint. I leaned forward and gripped the glass-like loops around her neck to anchor myself.

No matter how regal she looked from the ground, I always felt like I was riding a giant chicken.

Don't tell her I said that.

"Giddy on up, 'Shram," I clucked, and with a sudden lurch, Reshiram spread her wings and took flight. I didn't exactly understand how she did it. Fly suddenly, I mean. She didn't exactly take a running start. She just kind of opened her wings and took off. Legendary dragons evidently didn't need to follow the laws of physics either.

I didn't exactly like these sudden starts. They always made me feel sick. This one was no different.

Things never got much better when she'd finally settled on an air current. I was pretty sure she did it intentionally, but she was constantly throwing me. She'd veer sideways for no apparent reason, do a loop-de-loop mid-air, or tuck her wings in tight and dive so suddenly I didn't think she'd have enough time to lift up again. So it was that I'd gotten into the habit of holding on so tightly my fists were white, and by the time we'd land, I'd have one hell of a time unclenching them again.

Other than those small, insignificant details, though, she was a smooth ride. Not that I'd had much experience with any other Pokémon. Black had let me fly his Hydreigon once, and I supposed Reshiram was smoother than that, but that wasn't much comparison.

Besides, if I couldn't hold up to a twenty minute ride on a Pokémon, how the hell was I going to survive a night at an amusement park with N? I wasn't, that's how.

Had I mentioned how deathly afraid of heights I was?

No? Well, I was. They'd never really sat well with me, and let me tell you, being hundreds of feet in the air on a Pokémon who would feel no remorse if she chucked me _down_ those hundreds of feet only made me feel worse.

I closed my eyes and pressed my face into Reshiram's neck so that I wouldn't have to see how high up in the air we were. This probably wasn't the best of plans, given how often she'd tried to throw me, but I did it anyway. I wasn't afraid of much, just needles and Scolipede mostly, but I really couldn't handle heights.

I was pretty sure N knew this about me, so I had to wonder why he'd picked Nimbasa City of all places to meet up. I knew he really didn't like having both Zekrom and Reshiram in the Castle – _his_ Castle – after everything that had happened there, and all the Team Plasma activity _still_ happening there, but still. That's where we'd been three days ago, and I didn't understand what wouldn't work about it this time.

Now that I really thought about it, meeting in Nimbasa City didn't make any sense at all. Wasn't the whole reason we met up at the Castle because no one would see us there? Hadn't that been our agreement? To try and keep Reshiram and Zekrom as much of a secret as we could? Or at least… whatever it was happening between them a secret?

It was pretty wildly publicized, what N and I had done. Everyone knew we were the Heroes for which the legendary Pokémon Zekrom and Reshiram searched. Everyone knew that, not only had we released the dragons, but that we _controlled_ them. Everyone knew that, in taming the dragons, we had saved Unova.

That was easy enough to say, but I was pretty dang sure no one knew just what we had saved Unova _from_. And N and I planned to keep things that way for as long as we could.

Zekrom and Reshiram were the Pokémon of balance, of ideal and reality, of black and white. I was sure N had known that when he'd released Zekrom, just as I'd known it when I'd accepted the Light Stone from Lenora. Indeed, that was the whole reason Zekrom's presence was enough to awaken Reshiram from the Light Stone that fateful night in N's Castle.

Black could not exist without white; Zekrom could not exist without Reshiram. The darkness calls to the light, and the light calls again to the darkness. It all made sense. They were two halves of one whole, after all.

What we hadn't known was that that would carry on out after we'd captured them. That it would carry on out after we'd, more or less, put a seal on their destructive powers.

It made sense to me at the time. When N had released Zekrom, he'd released only one half of the whole. There was an imbalance. But when I'd released Reshiram, then that balance should have been likewise restored.

As it turned out, things didn't work out quite that nicely.

The balance, once broken, was not so easily restored.

Everything was fine. For two months, everything was fine. I had every reason to forget all about N and Team Plasma and being a Hero and the whole mess with Zekrom and Reshiram, and I was happy to do so. That small happiness just didn't last long.

Things started to get a little… strange after that. More unusual than strange, in the beginning. I might not have noticed for the first month or so if I didn't live so close to Professor Juniper. If I didn't hear the new trainers complaining for weeks on end about how there were no wild Pokémon straight from Nuvema Town to Nimbasa City, and even then they were rare. I usually did my training closer to the League, so I hadn't noticed, but when I'd gone out to see for myself, it was to find nothing. Not even a trail of a Pokémon.

Researchers across Unova had called it a natural phenomenon that happened every few hundred years or so. Pokémon would suddenly up and leave and make some sort of great migration – no one really knew where exactly they were migrating, but it was definitely happening, and it was definitely somewhere very reclusive for humans not to know about it. Apparently there were all kinds of evidence to support this.

I could buy that. Professor Juniper was on board with the theory, and Pokémon _did_ migrate. It was a little strange that only Pokémon from one area were doing it, but I figured those hotshot scientists knew what they were doing. I'd never make that mistake again.

So it didn't seem all that unusual a few weeks later when Pokémon started appearing again en masse. It didn't even seem all that strange that they were traveling in packs – _huge_ packs, of hundreds or more. Maybe it was a little peculiar that they were attacking in threes, fours, and even fives, but maybe they were just settling back in and taking their time to do it. Reclaiming territory or something.

Then the link to the Dream World suddenly failed, for no apparent reason. Poor Fennel had no idea what had happened, and was having a horrible time trying to restore it. Nothing she did seemed to be having any effect – Bianca had even taken her Musharna out to see if it could help. It hadn't. The whole incident seemed totally unrelated at the time – though I'd felt terrible for Fennel.

It wasn't until a month later that the seasonal cycle had fallen apart. And I mean fallen apart.

It started when Cubchoo stared to appear in the wild, miles away from snow. The poor things were dying, left right and center, in the heat. It was horrible to see. I'd come across one or two, well beyond saving, and it made me sick. No one was sure why they were migrating so suddenly in the summer, either. No one could seem to stop them from walking aimlessly out, in the height of August, to their deaths.

Then baby Deerling were flowering all wrong, too. As summer turned to autumn, they were blossoming. The weather just wasn't right to support it, though. In most places, when the sun wasn't quite right, the days were too short, and the temperatures were too low, the Deerling quickly became sick. PokéCenters were full of them – wild and tame alike. They almost couldn't support the trainer population, they were so busy.

Then the seasons themselves fell apart. I woke up to snow in the middle of September. It had all melted by the next day, and the cherry blossom tree in our back yard was blooming. Then, two days later, leaves were falling off the trees, and the next day, it was blisteringly hot. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just one extreme following another.

After two weeks of this, after more bodies of dead, innocent Pokémon then I ever cared to count had been buried, we had a night without a day.

The moon was out, and the stars were twinkling up above in the abyss of the heavens, but the sun never rose. Night reached across all of Unova; from peak to governing peak, there was nothing but a blanket of eternal blackness. One the sun would not breach.

That night without day stretched into two nights without day, and quickly time began to lose its meaning. People were panicking; things were burning in the distance in an attempt to bring forth light once again, but to no avail. We were still in darkness. Ever encroaching darkness. The world felt frozen over.

By the third night, people were resorting to paganism. I didn't look, but my mother had seen it. Someone had suggested that we had angered the ancient gods. Someone else had suggested sacrifice as the remedy. Human and Pokémon alike. There were carcasses hanging from doorsteps and on pikes around the town. Everywhere. The willing and unwilling alike would never see the light of day again. They were dead.

Those were dark days. As the third day-that-was-not-day started, there was only one word on people's tongues: Apocalypse. The Apocalypse had finally come to claim us all.

Maybe the Apocalypse would have come, if N hadn't appeared at my doorstep that night, Zekrom in tow. I'd always remember the look on his face when I'd opened the door.

Maybe it was because I saw him first in candlelight that he looked so striking – the power had gone out at the end of the first night without day, and no one had yet been able to restore it. The shadows made his face look oddly angular, his features somehow more defined. His eyes looked too dark for him, where they had always held a sparkle before. He looked… skeletal, somehow. Dead.

He'd asked me one thing, and I could still hear the desperation in his voice. It had chilled me.

_Where is Reshiram?_

It took only two hours.

The moment I'd released Reshiram, she'd roared at Zekrom, and the two had taken off, racing, over the line of trees; they were gone in seconds, not so much as a flicker of flame or a spark of lightning to show us just where they'd gone.

And N and I were left standing in my front yard, me in my pajamas and him in a dirty shirt and ripped jeans, trying to understand what was happening.

We'd stood there for a very long time, gazing unseeingly into the darkness, waiting for some sign of our Pokémon. We hadn't spoken. What was there to say, after all? For all we knew, our last hope had just run away from us, and we were waiting for the earth to awaken and swallow us whole.

Just when I'd lost all hope, it happened.

Zekrom and Reshiram lit up the sky.

I'd seen it enough to know Reshiram had used Cross Flame. Zekrom must have used Cross Thunder. The spark in the sky was so bright; I had to cover my eyes. It burned into my mind terribly, like a brand on the inside of my eyelids, and I couldn't watch it.

It went on for about twenty minutes before the light slowly died, but by then, there was a touch of pink in the sky, over the mountains. As the light from our Pokémon faded, the sky started to light up all on its own.

The sun was rising again.

I watched the sun rise with N that morning. Just stood there, shaky and unfeeling, as the sun rose on that fourth day. It rose in autumn. The leaves on the trees were red-orange, and as the day passed by, they fell in the gentle breeze coming from the west.

Eventually Zekrom and Reshiram returned, as though nothing had ever happened. The same day, the Cubchoo and Deerling fell back into their natural habits, and the Dream World link was restored. Pokémon started to behave normally again. Everything fell back into place, as neat as could be. As though it had never happened…

And N and I had a very long talk about what _had_ happened, why it had happened, how we could stop it from happening again.

Word of mouth was that the gods had given us another chance. N and I were the only ones who knew the truth. Pokémon ruled this world, not gods.

Every week since that day that wasn't day, I would fly Reshiram out to N's castle. Zekrom and Reshiram fought, more often than not, or sulked in opposite sides of the sky and refused to look at one another, but somehow… somehow that kept everything right. _That_ alone kept the balance. That kept Pokémon were they ought to be, that kept the world turning on its axis, that kept the sun in the sky.

We didn't want people to know. We didn't want people to know that it was us, just us, keeping the world spinning and the nights turning into days. That was too much pressure added to an already heavy burden.

So we kept it a secret. I'd told Black, so he would understand when I said, _No, not today_, but that was all. Cheren didn't know, Bianca didn't know… my own mother didn't know. And I wanted desperately to keep it that way.

That was why we used N's Castle for our little meetings. It was remote enough that people wouldn't notice two dragons at war with one another in the sky. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't question it, the Castle was so far off into nowhere. I'd thought we both understood the necessity of it.

But apparently not, if we were meeting in Nimbasa City.

It didn't feel right to question N, though. He was the one who always felt the turn in the currents when the balance started to break again. He was always the one to call me and tell me to bring Reshiram. I'd never noticed – the only time the imbalance had gotten out of hand, I hadn't noticed until it was almost too late.

That was why I'd always listened to him when he asked me to come. That's why I always had, and always would, drop everything, fly halfway across the country, just to see him. He was in tune with the balance. And I was not.

That's what got me on the back of this dragon trying to kill me, despite the fact that I lost all my nerve the moment we were half a foot off the ground. I didn't have a choice in this. I was already written into the fabrics that kept the earth going, and I wasn't going to be able to write myself out again. Not now.

As I opened my eyes, just wide enough to gauge how close we were to the bubbling city life that was Nimbasa City, Reshiram started to descend. We were far, far too high up for my liking, and I felt my stomach give an unpleasant lurch, but I bit my tongue and dealt with it.

We were somewhere over the desert wasteland that was Route 4 now. We would be in the heart of Nimbasa City any minute. Or on the outskirts of it, anyway, where I'd be able to recall Reshiram in peace. Which was really great, because I was going to lose lunch any second now.

A minute or two later, Reshiram touched ground. She landed like she took off – all at once. I also landed like I took off – totally unprepared.

As Reshiram landed, I flew off over the top of her head, did a kind of twist midair as I tried to figure out which way was up, and landed hard on my back. It hurt like hell, and I winced as I tried to move again. I was pretty sure Reshiram was laughing at me in her own way.

_Foolish little two-legger can't fly_, I was pretty sure she was saying.

"Frick, 'Shram," I moaned, wincing as I pushed myself up to a sitting position and turning to glare at her. She sure looked like she was mocking me, a little sort of half-smile on her face and a glimmer in her eye. "You're trying to kill me," I acknowledged sourly as little tendrils of pain licked up my spine. "You are honestly trying to kill me."

Standing up hurt. A lot. Hissing between my teeth, I recalled Reshiram, swearing at her beneath my breath. I threw her Pokéball in my bag rather than clipping it back on my belt. I never wanted to see her smug little look again. If I was lucky, I'd never find her in my black hole of a bag.

Looking around, I realized she'd dumped me in the same little clearing to the east of Nimbasa City we always used when we flew here (which wasn't often; but it had happened a time or two before). I'd heard the city was clearing it for a National Park or some such nonsense. A little unfortunate, as it made a great landing strip.

Dusting myself off, I started off to pick my way through some of the underbrush bordering the clearing. It wasn't very thick. I thought they'd probably already started thinning it. It did make it easier to get through, though, and after my day spent crawling through forest much thicker than this, it was something of a relief.

A few feet in, and I could already see the lights of Nimbasa City flashing up in the sky. The lights moved unnaturally on the rides of the amusement park, and above the line of the trees, they looked a little alien. The fact that the sun was setting rapidly in the west only added to the effect. If I'd been younger, I probably would have thought we were being invaded.

There was a fence not far from the clearing, separating the forest Reshiram and I had landed in from the rest of the city. I wasn't really sure why it was necessary – what was out there the public needed to be protected from? I shrugged the thought off.

It was just a few two-by-fours nailed together. A bit of a blemish on the rest of the upbeat, techno city, I thought. Point was, it wasn't very difficult to scale, even if my back was protesting, and I reached the top of it in a couple of seconds, swinging myself over, and landing neatly on the sidewalk on the other side like a cat.

No one really paid much attention to the roughed-up girl that had just jumped the fence, but there was a little boy with an ice cream cone in his hand across the street giving me a funny sort of look. I gave him a funny sort of look right back, and he quickly averted his eyes again. It wasn't polite to stare.

I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to work out some of the knots. I didn't care what people in Nuvema Town thought of me – they'd known me in diapers, after all – but people in Nimbasa City were a little different. I didn't want to look like a total savage to them. I knew people here. Cool people.

But there was no helping it. My hair was beyond fixing at this point.

Compromising, I looped it into a kind of messy bun, to hide the really terrible knots, and put my hat back on to hide the rest of it. Now all I had to do was pray the rest of me looked reasonable. It seemed a bit of a stretch.

Yet another reason I shouldn't even be in Nimbasa City, I supposed.

Sighing, I tried to wipe some more of the grime off my shorts and legs, but it was really beyond hope. I had a lovely layer of caked mud from my combat boots up past my knees, and it wasn't coming off any time soon. It would probably be best if I just started off now and got this whole surprise meeting with N over with.

I looked around, trying to gauge just where I was in the city's limits. The amusement park was usually visible from every corner of the city. The Ferris Wheel in particular could be seen from across town it was so tall, the lights bright enough to light the streets at night. Indeed, the few nights I'd stayed here, the light from it had actually kept me awake at night.

The park was only maybe a block or two down the road from where I was.

Great. That meant less people were likely to see me dressed like this.

I ducked into the shadows a little, just to be sure no one saw me too clearly, and jogged up the street towards the park. It was probably around six – most people would be having dinner. I didn't see anyone other than the little boy with the ice cream, but he was gone now.

I was glad the amusement park was free and I didn't have to try and dig out a few precious dollars from the bottom of my bag. Instead, I just jogged right in, under the banners, slowing down to a walk so I could look around and find N. Knowing him, he'd probably already _been_ at the amusement park when he'd called me. I'd bet Reshiram on it.

The amusement park didn't look half as flashy at night. You couldn't look at the interesting architecture or the funny bushes cut into the shapes of Pokémon. All you could see were the lights, and while those might be interesting to watch for a few minutes, I knew I'd lose interest quickly.

There weren't many people here. Maybe two or three stragglers, wandering around watching the rides run. Then, it was a Wednesday night, and when you lived in a city with its own amusement park, its appeal probably dropped off pretty quickly.

N wasn't very difficult to find – even in the dark.

Crazy tall, lanky guy, long green hair, pretty attractive, kind of shadowy… he was difficult to miss.

He was leaning against a tree just across from the Ferris Wheel, his arms crossed, watching the ride circle 'round and 'round. I couldn't begin to understand his fascination with dynamics and quantum whats-its, but just by looking at him it was easy to tell he loved it. Loved the laws that governed the natural world. I thought maybe it gave him something solid to hold onto. Something that never changed.

"Hey, N," I called out to him as I jogged up, dropping into my cheerful little voice almost out of habit. He turned at the sound of my voice, and his face broke into a wide smile as he saw me.

He _was_ crazy tall – the top of my head _just_ reaching his shoulder – and lanky in an elegant kind of way. I mean, I could understand why Team Plasma called him _Lord_, or even _King_. He could pass as royalty easily; just by the way he carried himself and the striking set of his features. What I could appreciate was that he acted so carefree, like it wouldn't have mattered even if he _did_ have blue blood.

"White," he grinned as I stopped beside him. His smile lessened a little as he took in my disheveled appearance. "What happened to you?" He asked, obviously concerned.

I felt my face flush a little despite myself, suddenly self-conscious, and I started trying to dust more of the mud off my legs. "Nothing. I was just out with my Pokémon. Things got a little… messy. You know how it is."

"Ah," he acknowledged with a little bob of his head, but he had a curious expression on his face, like he didn't quite understand what I'd said. "Anyway, shall we go up?" He continued forcibly after a moment of awkward silence.

"Up?" I asked, feeling confused as my eyebrows knit. "Up where?" Weren't we just going to release Reshiram and Zekrom so they could do whatever it was they did to keep the balance? I mean, why else would we have come here?

"The Ferris Wheel?" N prompted, nodding towards the ride across from us. He gave me a curious look again, like I was some mathematical equation he didn't understand.

I blinked. _We were going on the Ferris Wheel because…? _I mean, sure, rides, fun stuff to help us pass the time while our Pokémon went out and saved the world or whatever. But Reshiram and Zekrom always took their time before they returned, and it made way more sense to release them first.

"Are you feeling alright, White?" He asked gently when I didn't say anything, putting a hand under my elbow as though I were about to tip over. "We can postpone this if you want."

"I'm fine," I muttered a little more brusquely than I would have liked. _What does he mean we can postpone? Of course we can't postpone! This is Zekrom and Reshiram we're dealing with! _"The Ferris Wheel. Yeah." I finished lamely.

"If you're sure," he conceded, but was still watching me closely like I was about to spontaneously combust.

The hell was his problem? Did I have something on my face or something? Something that screamed _this girl needs to be quarantined right now_?

"Let's just go up," I brushed aside him and stomped across to the Ferris Wheel, feeling a little put-out, and leaving him to catch up to me. First, I looked terrible, and then I looked sick. Gee, thanks, N. Not like I missed my chance at a Blitzle for you, or came storming out here on 'Shram to have her try and kill me as we landed or anything.

No one else was on the Ferris Wheel. I could tell, looking through the glass of each of the separate carriages. Maybe N was just taking a risk and thought we could release the dragons at the top or something. I didn't like the idea, but fact was, no one was out to see them anyway.

The entire amusement park was on-demand, and I hit a button hard with a fist to stop the ride so we could get on. A few seconds later, and the wheel had stopped, the door to the nearest compartment sliding open for us.

I stomped over to it and slid into one side of the compartment, crossing my arms a little irritably. N followed close behind me, sitting across from me with the odd look still on his face, as he pushed the door closed again with a foot.

I didn't look at him as the wheel jittered back into life and started to rotate again. Couldn't we get on with it? I felt a little grumpy. It wasn't because of the little tendrils of fear working their way through my veins at being up in the air, either.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean forward a little and set his elbows on his knees, watching me carefully. The wheel spun once, and neither of us had yet said anything. Neither of us had even moved. I was concentrating hard on my breathing, feeling my chest expand and contract.

The compartment wasn't lit internally, by the moonlight let me see him well enough. As we reached the bottom of the wheel's path for the second time, I finally turned to him and asked, "So what did you want to talk about?"

Only he'd asked the same thing at the same moment.

My eyebrows knit again, and I was pretty sure I was giving him the same look he'd been giving me before. "What are you talking about? _You_ asked _me_ out here," I said not so much as a second later. "You, me, Nimbasa City, amusement park, half an hour." I repeated.

N looked about as confused as I was. "I didn't ask you out here, White," he replied, shaking his head a little. "You called me and asked me to meet you here. You said you wanted to talk to me somewhere private. You said to meet you at the Ferris Wheel in Nimbasa City."

…_What_?

"I – " I started, but was cut off when the Ferris Wheel suddenly jerked to a stop. I was thrown forward hard, but N caught me neatly in his arms before I hit the floor.

"The hell…?" I heard N start, and I realized with a shock that it was the first time I'd heard him even come close to swearing. I looked up at him from where he was holding me off the floor, but he was staring up at the ceiling of our compartment, his eyebrows knit and a frown already setting in over his features.

I pushed myself to my feet and out of his arms, looking up at the ceiling, too. Of course, there wasn't much to see, except for an escape door mounted in the center of the ceiling.

"We… stopped?" I whispered quietly, looking now out the window. A few stars were starting to twinkle into existence, and just looking at them, it was easy to tell we weren't moving anymore.

I leaned forward a little and looked out over the edge of the window. I immediately wished I hadn't, and my stomach did flip-flops. We were at the very top of the wheel's path, maybe a hundred feet up, and we were _definitely_ not moving.

_No one knows we're up here_, I thought suddenly. _We're practically the only people in the park._

How were we going to get down?

I felt panic start to gnaw at my stomach.

There was a thud behind me a second later and I jerked around to find that N had fallen over. He was on his knees, head bowed and gripped between his hands as though he were in pain.

"N…?" I asked a little shrilly, my eyes wide. I dropped down to my knees beside him, not sure what to do. His eyes were screwed shut like he was hurt, and he was clenching his jaw hard. Something was wrong. Really, really wrong.

"Screaming, screaming… they're screaming…" he whispered to himself, and then gave a little agonized cry, pressing his fingers so hard into his temples his skin turned a sickly off white. "They're screaming. They're screaming."

"Who's screaming?" I asked desperately. My hands felt all clammy and I rubbed them against my thighs. I really didn't know what to do. "Who's screaming, N? Are you okay?" _What a stupid question to ask_, a rational part of my mind barked back at me. _Does he _look_ okay_? "N? Talk to me, N. Who's screaming? What's wrong?"

_What if he's seizing or something_? The not-so-rational part of my mind screamed at me in a panic. _What if he's seizing and he dies right here right now because I don't know first aid_?

His eyes opened wide again all at once, and he jerked around to stare at me with wild, green eyes. He gripped my arms, so hard it hurt and I tried to jerk away. He stared into my eyes with such fierce intensity it actually scared me.

"We have to get them out of here, White. _We have to get them out of here_," he said quickly, and then released my arms, springing to his feet again. His eyes darted around the compartment like quick-fire, and then back up at the ceiling, at the escape door.

"There's only one way out," he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth and climbing up to stand on one of the seats in the compartment. He looked back up at the ceiling, and I could see the silent calculations working themselves out in his head.

"What's going on, N?" I asked urgently. I stood up again and gripped the hand rail beside the window of the compartment to keep myself from shaking. "_Who_ do we have to get out of here? Why? What's going on?"

"The Pokémon_," _he replied tersely, his jaw still clenched in concentration. He seemed to come to some sort of decision, and gripped a rail protruding from the ceiling hard enough for his fists to turn white. He pushed against it a little, testing it. "We have to get them…."

He took a deep breath, jumped up, and then somehow managed to anchor himself on the bar well enough to flip himself up and over so he could kick once against the ceiling hard. "_Out of here_. Now."

With a _squeak_ the escape door suddenly flipped open, banging against the roof on the outside.

I stared up at the open sky stupidly.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. I was _not_ getting up on top of this ride from hell. I was _not_. Especially when I didn't even know why I had to.

"What's going on, N?" I asked again, as he jumped back down onto the floor of the compartment with me. "What're you talking about? Why do we have to get our Pokémon out of here? _Who was screaming, N_?"

He looked at me quickly like it was for the first time, or as though he were shocked I could be so oblivious. "No time. Just trust me on this one, White, please. We need to get out of here. _Now_."

His intensity was scaring me again. I'd only seen him act like this once before, look like this before, talk like this before, and that was the third night-without-day. He was being serious. We needed to get out of here.

Hadn't I just been thinking that he was the one person I would always listen to? That he was the one person so in tune with the world it was disturbing? _When he said jump, I didn't have much choice but to ask how high._

I swallowed back the fear rising in me, and nodded once. "Good girl, White. I'm going to get on the roof and pull you out, okay?" He whispered quickly, and I nodded again, feeling suddenly numb and detached.

N got back on the seat and jumped easily up to the window, catching onto the lip of it and hauling himself out. A second later he leaned back in through the window and offered me both his hands.

My heart hammering against my chest, I gripped his arms with either of my hands around his wrists, and he did likewise. A second later he was hauling me up, and I kicked up hard against one of the seats to try and help him. I was pretty sure I wasn't a lightweight.

When my upper body was out, N let go of my hands, and I managed to push myself out. I sat on my knees, on the roof of the topmost compartment of the Ferris Wheel. I kept my eyes screwed shut. I didn't want to know how high up we were.

N gave me a moment to catch my breath, but then said brusquely, "White, listen to me. This is going to sound crazy, but you need to release your Pokémon. Now. All of the ones you have on you. Can you do that?"

My eyes snapped open at his suggestion, and I stared up at him, my mouth open in surprise. "What?" I squeaked, breathing hard. Do _what_ with my Pokémon?

"Release your Pokémon," he repeated quickly. "You need to release your Pokémon. On the ground. Tell them to run. Back to Nuvema Town if the can. Come on, White! We don't have much time. They're coming. We need to get the Pokémon out of here."

"Release my…" I shook my head at the inane idea. I couldn't just release my Pokémon and tell them to run back to Nuvema Town. I just couldn't. "Who's coming, N? What's going on? Why do I have to release my Pokémon?"

"I'll do mine first," he replied quickly, picking his five Pokéballs off of his belt. Without another second to waste, he released all five of his Pokémon, chucking the Pokéballs down to the ground as they started to open.

He had his Zoroark, Liepard, a Zebstrika, a Stoutland, and, of course, Zekrom, I saw, teetering nervously off the edge of the roof. He'd actually done it, released all of his Pokémon. "Run. All of you. Now. As fast and as far away as you can get." N commanded them brusquely, and I stared at him in disbelief.

This wasn't happening. This was not happening.

I couldn't believe it.

"White, now!" He turned back to me, and I could hear panic in his voice now. He was being utterly serious. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut across me easily. "Please, White. Just listen to me. We need to get them out of here, and then we can try and get ourselves off this thing. But them first. Please. I'll explain later when there's time."

I couldn't believe I was listening to him.

I couldn't believe my hands, shaking, were reaching for my belt and pulling off all my Pokéballs.

They were, though, and with just the briefest moments of hesitation, I chucked my own Pokéballs down to the ground far below, releasing my Serperior, Liligant, Chandelure, Mienshao, and Simipour.

But before I could tell them to run, the sky was filled with such an intense light it blinded me, and I had the sudden sensation that I was falling.

Then I blacked out.


	3. Track 02: Caught Up in the Crossfire

**A/N: SUPER IMPORTANT**_**.**_A whole pile of characters with super weird names await ye. You're going to recognize them as characters from **Pokémon Adventures**, but you need to know that these **ARE NOT** the same characters. I've borrowed/will be borrowing some of their habits, but these **are not** the same characters. These are the playable characters and their rivals from the main string of games. So I get a little bit of creative license over them, okay? ;3 And thank you to those who have read / reviewed / favourited / whatever. It makes my day! I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. =3

**Warning: **Major spoilers for the end of Pokémon Black/White lie herein. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer: **I own the scenario. Other than that, I've gone and taken a bunch of characters owned by other people, and stuck them together to see what would happen. It's like one big party.

* * *

**On Earth as in Heaven**

**Chapter 2 – Caught Up in the Crossfire**

* * *

"… heard something like Unava… Oonava… Yunuvo… something like that. Anyway, I've never heard of the place. It must be pretty far off. Might not even be inhabited by Pokémon. I mean, these two came in clean, without a Pokéball between them that I saw, so I'm not sure why they're here. They're not like us."

"Well, they look pretty normal. Not like the guys from Sinnoh. And the girl… doesn't that look like a Pokéball design on her hat? Maybe she's just starting out and doesn't have any Pokémon yet. She looks like a traveler, all covered in mud like that, don't you think?"

_All covered in mud like that._

Why did everyone seem so fixated on the fact that I was covered in mud?

I screwed my eyes shut tight, trying to go back to sleep. Not a second later, and my eyes snapped open again with a start.

_Where am I…?_

Wherever it was didn't believe in lighting, natural or otherwise.

I strained my eyes to see properly, blinking sleep from my eyes. My head felt kind of fuzzy – a little like my broken Sceiver, really – and I couldn't open my eyes very wide without flinching. Not that there was much to see anyway. There wasn't nearly enough light to see by, and I had yet to become feline enough to see in the dark.

I was lying on my belly, on what I assumed was the floor. It was cold, flat, and not terribly comfortable – very floor like, really, but definitely not five-star hotel quality. However, what it lacked in comfort, it made up for in shininess (always a plus in my book). Looking-glass shiny, like someone had polished it – for a very long, _long_ time. It was a nice touch, anyway.

It was shiny enough to reflect what little light there was, and I could actually see myself in it – a little too clearly, truth be told. I could see my cheek pressed against the floor, my groggy, dazed expression, and my hat slipping sideways off my head. I could even see the mascara streaks under my eyes. If there had been any doubt in my mind that I'd wake up looking better, that hope was quickly dashed. Still looked like shit.

As my eyes adjusted, I could see N lying on the floor a few feet away from me. He was lying awkwardly on his side, facing me, eyes closed and breathing shallowly. He had a gash in his forehead, running clean from his scalp straight down to his eye. It looked sticky, like it was new and the bleeding was just now starting to stop.

He didn't look particularly conscious…

I blinked a few times, trying to gather my bearings and keep my breathing even. _Let's do a quick rundown. I can hardly see. N's unconscious and hurt. I have no idea where we are, who slashed N, or what we're doing here. Sounds like a fabulous start to the day. _I swallowed back the bile rising in the back of my throat.

_Just stay calm… just stay calm… Step one: figure out just what the hell is going on_, I instructed myself.

Easier said than done.

"… and Platinum – oh, sorry. I mean _Berlitz_ – doesn't look _that_ weird. She's a prissy, stuck-up brat, but she doesn't look weird. She's just trying to do _diva_ when she's not nearly old enough to pull it off. Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but she's just not ready for them yet. No matter how much money her daddy throws at her."

_What the hell kind of name is Berlitz_? I thought quietly to myself. _I'd be a prissy, stuck-up brat if I was stuck with a name like that, too._

I shook the thought from my mind – that was _really_ not important at the moment. What was more important was that there were at least two other girls (at least they sounded like two girls) somewhere around me, and they'd mentioned a third. Now all I had to do was decide if that was a good thing or not.

Then, I'd been unconscious, asleep, whatever, around them for God knows how long, and if they'd been intending to knife me or something, I figured they would have already done it. No, it seemed unlikely that they were very malicious. Still…

"She wears a scarf, a toque, and boots, paired with a tank and a skirt, Kris. She needs to decide what the weather is already," one of the girls replied with a little laugh. She sounded kind of quirky. "I guess that Diamond guy isn't a lot better, though. Sinnoh must be a weird place. Strange climate. Ever been?"

"No," the other girl (was it Kris?) said. "But I know Gold and Soul – " She stopped so suddenly it felt like the world had suddenly been turned to mute. A nervous silence filled in the space between her words, like pure tension vibrating in air. She took such a deep breath, I could hear it. "I mean… I know Gold met a couple of Sinnoh's Gym Leaders, once."

"At least we've heard of Sinnoh," the other girl said quickly, focusing elsewhere. I thought she'd probably sensed the uneasiness in the air (she would have had to work not to, after all). "But that Yunuva place? We'll have to ask one of them when they wake up. I always thought Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh were the only human-inhabited places out there. Maybe I just misheard when they was brought in."

That sounded an awful lot like my cue. _Yunuva_? Honestly.

"It's – " I tried to stay, but my voice came out like a squeak. I coughed, clearing my throat before trying again. It felt like I'd swallowed an awful lot of sand in the last few hours, and my mouth tasted like grit. This wasn't quite the entrance I'd been hoping for. "It's Unova. We're from Unova."

"Oh! You're awake!" One of them – I couldn't tell which – squealed as I tried to push myself into a sitting position. My back hurt terribly when I tried to move (_damn you, Reshiram_), but I managed to get myself on my knees more or less, leaning heavily on my arms, so I could look around.

There wasn't much light sitting up, either. There must have been some somewhere, though, as it wasn't pitch black, just kind of… dim. Like it was dusk and I was walking through fog. Kind of shadowy and hazy, like the air was filled with smoke. It didn't taste smoky though; it tasted wet like mist, and that helped get the gritty taste out of my mouth. But it did make me notice how thirsty I was.

My first impression looking around was that we were in a cave – but not a cave made from rock, or carved out of a mountain face, or anything like that. It looked almost like it was made out of onyx: dark, glassy, and semi-precious. That would explain why the floor had looked so dang shiny, as if it had been made out of jewel.

The other thing that didn't exactly scream _cave_ was how man-made the whole place looked. The floor was perfectly level everywhere I could see it, not undulating and rocky like I would have expected. The cavern we were in looked too big. I could have played a good baseball game in here, I thought.

The walls rose up so high they looked to reach into infinity, and I couldn't see the ceiling. Whether that was because of the lack of light or because it really did go on forever, I couldn't tell. The walls didn't look quite so manufactured, either. They looked a little too crystallized to be strictly normal, and it looked like chunks of the onyx (or whatever it was) were trying to grow out and up, into the chamber we were in and pressing in on us from all sides. It was a little claustrophobic, actually.

If I strained my eyes, I could see five – no, six – shadowy enclaves in the walls in different spots. They looked a bit like tunnels leading elsewhere. I had to wonder how big this cave-thing we were in really was. Massive. It had to be _massive_.

I felt displaced. I'd been in one of _the_ most technologically advanced cities in all of Unova. And now I was in – for all intents and purposes – a _cave_. It just didn't match up.

_And what had happened to my Pokémon_? Was this why N told me to release them? Had he known something I hadn't? That we were going to be – I didn't even know what the word was – kidnapped?

Speaking of…

"Which one of you was the one screaming?" I asked bluntly, turning my attention to the two girls sitting cross- legged on the floor a few feet away from me. "Someone was screaming."

One – the _older_ one, I subconsciously labeled her – was a brunette, with hair falling loose easily to her waist, and startlingly ice-blue eyes. She was very feminine and lithe-looking; not terribly powerful, but swift and cunning as hell, I thought. She wore a blue tank and a red skirt – it must have been warm wherever she was from – with a white boater perched on the top of her head. I was pretty sure she was older than I was.

The other one – the _confident _one, I labeled – had (and I did a bit of a double take) blue-brown hair, tied in two pigtails on the sides of her head. She had an athletic build, like she worked out, with muscle definition in her legs I could see even in the dark. She seemed practical; not as pretty as the older one, but better prepared. She wore shorts, a jacket which looked pretty much everything-proof, and a pair of severely battered runners.

They looked awfully innocent, but I wasn't about to let my guard down.

"Screaming?" The older one gave me a funny sort of look, and a smile that made me feel like she knew more than she was letting on. It put me off her in a heartbeat. "I wasn't aware anyone was screaming. Were _you_ screaming, Kris?"

The confident one – _Kris_ – shook her head. "You might have hit your head pretty hard. Er – _they_ might have hit your head pretty hard," Kris explained easily with a wave of her hand. "You probably imagined the screaming. I know Sapphire didn't come out of it too well, either, and Silver was screaming bloody murder himself when he finally woke up here."

Oh. Now that just made me feel so much better. They thought I had imagined it. They thought I was crazy. Great. Number one way to be considered competent by strangers? Make them think you're deranged. Works every time.

And who were these people with ridiculous names, anyway? _Silver_? _Sapphire_? Really? I knew _White_ wasn't exactly awe-inspiring, but still…

I shook my head even before Kris had finished, completely dismissing the notion. "No. My – N said he heard someone screaming. Back in Raimon City. He said we had to get out. And then I passed out. Someone was screaming."

Kris pursed her lips, not looking entirely convinced. "No one was screaming. It was probably just the beginnings of the miasma used to knock you out. I know when I was abducted, before I fainted, I thought – " but she cut herself off and didn't finish. "Anyway, it causes hallucinations."

I wasn't going to take that as an answer, but didn't say anything. Maybe sometimes I didn't like N much, but I would trust him with my life in a heartbeat. Hadn't I already? Someone had definitely been screaming. He hadn't told me to abandon my Pokémon for nothing.

"You said abducted?" I asked instead, no longer feeling too amiable towards either of the two girls. "N and I have been abducted, and so were you? By who? Why? What happened?"

The other girl answered this time. "Sorry to say we can't answer many of those questions. It's safe to say you've been abducted, though. Red, Green, and I have been here for almost a month now, judging from the dates the others were abducted. We haven't figured out much in that time. What we do know is that there are fourteen of us here now, including you and… what did you say his name was? N?"

"N," I agreed quietly, casting a quick glance over my shoulder back at N, still very much unconscious on the floor. I watched him for a moment longer than I usually would have, as the words of the older girl sunk in.

… _Have been here for almost a month now…_

… _Haven't figured much out…_

… _There are fourteen of us here now…_

We'd been abducted. N, me, and twelve other strangers had been abducted. We were being held here – wherever here was – and it didn't seem like anyone knew why. Or even how long we'd be kept here.

It seemed surreal. I started to feel a little shaky, and tried to take in deep breaths. I didn't have my Pokémon, and I was here in a place I didn't know with complete strangers being told I'd been abducted.

Without knowing why I did it, I stood up suddenly, walked over to where N lay unmoving, and collapsed down beside him. I clasped one of his hands between both of mine, and then pressed our clasped hands to my mouth, almost like a prayer. I tried to remember how to breathe, but it felt like the air was getting stuck somewhere between my mouth and my lungs.

I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating on just breathing. In… out… I felt like I was choking. I didn't know what to do. And N was the only thing that seemed solid in that moment. I knew N. N had saved my life. N brought day to endless nights.

Then the moment passed.

I felt like I could breathe again. I didn't have time to mope around. If I _had_ been abducted, I needed to figure out how to get out of here. Sooner, rather than later. I needed to figure out what was going on. I didn't let go of N's hand.

"What _do_ you know?" I asked, but it came out as a whisper despite myself. "What _have_ you found out?" I continued a little more strongly, looking back up at the two girls with N between us. Somehow things felt safer from here.

"No one's out to hurt you," Kris said quickly. "I mean… they're not exactly _gentle_ with us, but you're safe here." Judging by the slash on N's forehead, that had yet to be seen, but I didn't say anything. "Actually… it's a little strange. Other than when someone new is brought in, we haven't seen our abductors at all. It's just us twelve – or, fourteen now, I guess."

"Yeah," the other girl continued quickly. "Everything's actually pretty normal. I mean, if you can get over not knowing anything. They feed us three times a day, we have rooms to sleep in, showers… everything."

That wasn't making me feel a lot better. I felt like I had a knot in my stomach. "Where are the rest of you? The other ten?" I asked quickly. "What do you do all day, if you're not being kept here for a purpose?"

"Oh, we explore around the caves a lot," the older girl continued easily. "They go on for practically forever, and when you get in deeper, there are all sorts of weird drawings in there. We're trying to decipher some of them, see if there's a way out, that kind of thing. Sometimes the guys invent sports and things, to let off some steam. I know Red and Gold are in Tunnel One, and I think everyone else is in Tunnel Six. Except for Berlitz, of course. She's in her room, like _always_."

_Berlitz_. There was that name again.

"So you have no idea why we're here, where we are, or who abducted us?" I pressed, hoping against hope that they would somehow develop a more concrete answer.

"Not a clue," the older girl confirmed, and I felt my heart sink. "I mean, we're obviously somewhere near – what did you call it? Unova? – somewhere near Unova. But I don't know where we'll be going next. I don't even know where Unova is. Never heard of the place." She made a bit of a face, like just the word _Unova_ tasted off to her.

She hesitated for a moment, like she was lulling something over in her mind, before she finally asked, "You don't have… another really close friend or anything, do you? Maybe someone you've traveled with or something? Make your little duo with N into a trio?"

"Bianca. Cheren. Black," I said without thinking about it, then realized she had no idea who these people even were. "I mean… well, me, and three other friends of mine are a bit of a quartet, but… me and N… aren't really close…"

"Hmm… well that kind of breaks that little pattern, huh, Kris?" The older girl mused, but then shrugged. "It's nothing. There were just three of us from Kanto, three from Johto, three from Hoenn, and three from Sinnoh. We're all kind of close. You're throwing off the balance."

_Throwing off the balance_…

What else was new in my life? I was practically born to throw off the balance.

I let that thought slip from my mind. She hadn't meant it like that. How could she, if she didn't even know Unova existed? "Kanto? Johto?" I asked. "Where are those? I've never heard of them."

"You've never heard of _Kanto_?" Kris suddenly broke in, disbelief written all over her face. "I thought everyone had heard of Kanto." When I looked no less enlightened, Kris pressed. "It's practically where Pokémon training began. You _do_ know about Pokémon, don't you?"

"Of course I know about Pokémon," I said a little defensively. "I have eight badges. I've beaten the League Champion." _I caught the legendary dragon of light_, I added silently in my head.

"And you haven't heard of _Kanto_?" The other girl continued. "You've never heard of Red? He's practically a legend, anywhere you go. Green is… well… he's not too shabby either, training-wise. He was Kanto's League Champion for a bit, and is a Gym Leader in Viridian City now. Or, he was, until he was abducted."

I had _definitely_ never heard of anyone named after Christmas. And Alder had been League Champion for like… _ever_. "Never heard of either of them," I admitted dryly.

"You've never heard of Kanto…" the older girl breathed, as though this mystified her. "So you've probably never heard of Johto, either… Have you heard of Hoenn? Or Sinnoh? Or _anywhere_ other than Unova?"

I shook my head, searching my mind for any time I might have heard the words _Hoenn_ or _Sinnoh_, but I came up with nothing. I thought about the map of Unova, how the borders disappeared into nothingness. There was nothing on the other side of the League. Pokémon didn't even live there. It was a wasteland.

I'd been there. Not very far, but I'd breached the borders of Unova a time or two, just out of curiosity. It was eerie, like walking through a graveyard. Something about the air had felt static and dead. And through all of the trees, ancient and twisted, I'd found not a single Pokémon. Ever. Not even a sign of one.

No. I'd always thought the borders of humanity and Pokémon alike had been the borders of Unova. Nothing lived outside of those borders.

And now these girls were telling me there was so much more. The way they talked about these places – _Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh_, I subconsciously ran through them in my head – they sound big. Probably as large as Unova. Countries in their own right. I couldn't even imagine.

"You said you had eight badges and defeated the League Champion?" Kris suddenly broke into my thoughts. When I nodded slowly, she continued, "But you've never heard of Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, or Sinnoh. And we've never heard of you."

Kris turned to the other girl, who was running her fingers through her hair precariously. "Isn't it a little strange we'd both run on the same system, training-wise? Eight gyms… Leagues… And yet we've never heard of each other?"

The other girl pursed her lips, mulling it over for a moment, still combing her hair. "I suppose a little. But Pokémon are Pokémon. I always figured it was universal. But the configuration is a little strange, I'll agree."

Maybe it _was_ odd, but I couldn't find myself caring a smidge about it. I was more concerned about the present situation, thanks. "Never mind that. Just who are you two?" I asked.

"Hmm?" the older girl turned her attention back to me. "Oh, we're your Welcoming Committee, of course." She said matter-of-factly, as though this were the most natural answer in the world. "Ah – Welcome, by the way. We're self-elected, so maybe we weren't the best suited for the job. Just be glad I jumped in before Red could. Not that he ever would, but he's been a real grump lately."

"My _what_?" I asked the moment she'd finished speaking, staring at her in disbelief. _Welcoming Committee_? This had to be some sort of joke. The thought was just too ridiculous to even consider.

"Your Welcoming Committee," the older girl repeated with a shrug. "We thought _someone_ should be here when you woke up. It's a little unnerving, after you've fainted and you wake up somewhere totally different, robbed of anything you had on you but your clothes."

It wasn't until she said those words that I realized my bag was gone. I had my empty belt still loose around my hips, but my bag was gone. A little dazed, I looked around, but it was pretty clear it wasn't here. It was gone, and with it, the broken Sceiver N said he would fix. Or someone had said they would fix anyway, since it evidently hadn't been N I'd talked to over the Sceiver that had invited me to Nimbasa City.

That would have been a link to humanity, right there. The perfect link to humanity.

And it was gone.

I felt my heart sink lower. It seemed I really was trapped here, with my Pokémon gone, and with no one knowing where I was. I hadn't told anyone I was going to Nimbasa City. My mother had expected me home for dinner. I was supposed to have seen Black. And phoned Bianca.

No one knew where I was, including me. I was alone here.

I gripped N's hand a little more tightly. He still wasn't awake. "I meant who are you two specifically. If we're going to be…" I swallowed hard, just getting through the words. _Just keep putting one foot in front of the other for now, White_, I coached myself. "If we're going to be stuck here together for a while, I'd like to know at least your names."

"Oh, of course," Kris said easily. "I'm Crystal, but everyone calls me Kris. Here and back home. And for the record, I'm from Johto. You'll notice later we all have our little groups. I'm with Gold and Silver – you'll meet them eventually."

"And I'm Blue," the older girl finally identified herself, and gave me a little wave. "I'm from Kanto, home of the great. I came here with Green and Red – the legends themselves. Don't let them shadow me – I'm easily the one with the most personality." She winked at me conspiratorially. "And who are you?"

"White," I said simply, and figuring I should say more, I added. "From Unova, the place you've never heard of. And N… he's from Unova, too." I thought it was probably best not to mention anything about Team Plasma. Or the fact that N went by _Lord_. It just wasn't something that screamed _we come in peace_.

"You two said you had Pokémon," I continued quickly, trying to turn attention away from me and N. "Where are they? They're okay too, aren't they?"

Blue hesitated, then opened her mouth like she was about to say something, but no sound came out. She chewed on her lower lip, looking over to Kris to fill in the words she couldn't say.

Kris quickly averted her gaze from mine, but said, "We don't… really know what happened to our Pokémon. Don't take it the wrong way, White – we think they're safe, too – but we don't really know where they are. We all woke up without any Pokéballs. Did you have any on you when you were abducted?"

I swallowed. For the second time since I'd woken up, I had to wonder if N had known something I hadn't. Why he'd told me to release my Pokémon… had he known we would all be taken? "No. Right before it happened… N told me… he said to release them, and tell them to run. So we both did. I have no idea where they are now."

This didn't seem to sit well with either of them, and I realized I'd played N out to be some sort of deranged psychic. Hearing people screaming, telling me to release my Pokémon like he knew something was coming…

"Your friend… sounds like quite a curious person. It will be interesting to meet him." Blue finally said, and I suddenly didn't want N to meet her at all. N was… well, he was _different_. But a good kind of different. And I got the feeling that Blue wasn't going to appreciate that.

"Yes. Yes, he is," I replied, catching Blue's eye and holding it a moment too long to be strictly friendly.

But before the tension between us could build much, N suddenly started to move. I started a bit, and looked down at him. He'd rolled over on his back, and was gripping one of my hands so tightly it hurt, his expression a mixture between pain and concentration. He lost a little of his angelical innocence, with his face like that. It just didn't fit him right.

"They're still screaming, they're still screaming…" he whispered, his brow knitting as he continued to bruise my hand. "Have to help them. Have to help them get out of here. They're so afraid. They're screaming."

I leaned over him, pressing the back of the hand he _wasn't_ trying to break against the side of his face. He felt kind of feverish. "No one's screaming. You need to wake up, N. No one's screaming." I said simply, conscious of Blue and Kris still watching us.

He _wasn't_ crazy. He was just unique. And maybe he did have a bit of a sixth sense I didn't understand, but that didn't stop me from thinking he would never use it to do anyone harm. This just probably wasn't a great first impression for either Blue or Kris.

N quieted down after a moment or two, and his eyes started to open. He stared at my face, above his, and into my eyes for a long moment as his own eyes worked back into focus. Even then he didn't stop looking at me, reading my expression through the mirrors that were my eyes. The story they told was probably less than stellar.

"White…" he murmured, finally releasing my hand and reaching up to smudge a bit of mascara off my cheek with the pad of his thumb. Normally I would have hated that he'd done it, but right now I didn't mind as his skin brushed past mine. "The Pokémon?"

"I released them like you said," I whispered. I felt like some sort of calm had washed over me with him awake. He would know what to do, like he always did. He would know what to do to get out of here and back to the real world. He was the true Hero – I was the tag-along.

He shook his head a little. "Not our Pokémon, White," he whispered back. "The Pokémon already here. They're screaming. They're afraid, White. More afraid than I've ever heard a Pokémon be. They don't understand what's happened to them. They're trapped somewhere, screaming for someone to help them."

I stared at him, but I knew he was being honest. N wouldn't – _couldn't_ – lie. "Before, on the Ferris Wheel. It wasn't a person's screaming you heard, it was – "

"A Pokémon's," he agreed quickly with a little nod of his head. "You can't hear them? There must be fifty, sixty voices, maybe more. They're crying. They're afraid. We need to help them."

Pokémon screaming. In a place like this. Pokémon missing. From twelve abducted trainers. It was no coincidence. N had heard the voices of the Pokémon of the twelve abducted trainers.

"That's why you told me to release my Pokémon – you heard the ones here screaming?" I asked immediately. _We think they're safe too_, Kris had said. Maybe not. "Where is the screaming coming from? Somewhere close?"

"I heard Pokémon screaming for the wild one's around Raimon City to run," he conceded. "And they sounded like they were in so much pain, and the sound appeared so suddenly, I couldn't just ignore it, White. It's an empathy link, between me and Pokémon. It wasn't a hoax. They were trying to warn everyone to get away. We have to help them. You have to believe me, White."

"I do believe you," I said quickly, and I did. I _knew_ he had an empathy link with Pokémon. And _yes_, I thought it was the strangest thing ever, but I also knew that it was honest. If he could hear Pokémon telling us to _get out_, there really were Pokémon telling us to _get out_. "But can you tell where they are, N?"

"No…" he breathed, and I watched as a bit of the light in his eyes started to die. I could tell he hated himself for not being able to tell just where they were. Hated that he couldn't help them. "No… but they're close, and and they sound like they're in pain, and we have to try and help them."

"How many of them are there?" Kris suddenly broke into our moment. I'd actually forgotten that she and Blue were still there. I glanced up at her, and she was on her feet, fists tightly clenched as she watched N closely, a fire burning in her eyes. "Can you tell which Pokémon? Is there a Meganium? Or an Arcanine?"

N looked over at her, but he didn't seem surprised that we had an audience. He didn't even ask who she was, or where we were, or what had happened, like I had. He fell into things, like he already knew. I supposed in a way, he did. The Pokémon had told him all he cared about. And the things that mattered to him weren't people.

"None of them are Pokémon I recognize. I've never heard of Meganium or Arcanine," he admitted easily to her. "But there are easily sixty voices, maybe more. Somewhere around us. I can't tell… there's too much noise to tell just where."

It was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. "Seventy-two," Blue suddenly piped up, and her eyes looked strangely glazed over. She'd made the connection between the wounded Pokémon and her missing ones. "There should be seventy-two voices. All twelve of us had six Pokémon a piece when we were abducted. That makes seventy-two voices."

"Do they sound badly hurt?" Kris quickly broke in again as N sat up so he could properly address Kris' questions. "Are they… really, really in pain? Is there anything we can do? Can you tell them we'll come rescue them, or are the voices just one way?"

"I can only hear them," N said quickly. "I can't speak to them over distances. And the voices… are drowning themselves out… it's difficult to tell. But they're definitely afraid, more than anything. Really, really afraid. These Pokémon are yours?"

"Yes," Blue said breathlessly, a look of utter defeat falling over her face. "Yes, they're ours. But we didn't – that is, we didn't know where they were. We thought they were as safe as we were. We didn't think…" She bit her lower lip hard and screwed her eyes shut, not finishing.

"We have to find the others," Kris said quickly. "We have to tell them what you've told us, and we have to devise a plan to get the Pokémon out of… wherever it is they are. We were content to wait and see what happened – but this is one step over the line. If they've touched our Pokémon… There's no time to waste. Can you stand, N? And White – you come, too."

Things had turned around so quickly, that I balked a little when Kris turned her attention back to me. One moment, I'd been worried about Kris and Blue taking N the wrong way, thinking he was deranged, and now they were eating up anything he could tell them. Had they sensed the sincerity in him, too?

Or was what he'd said about the Pokémon voices so jarring to them, they couldn't help but believe him? Did they care so much about their Pokémon, that at one word of their being in pain, they'd drop everything to find them again?

I didn't know. I wasn't even sure how _I'd_ react if it was my Pokémon that had been abducted.

Thank God N had saved me from that.

N was up and standing in a second at Kris' suggestion, but didn't look exactly sure on his feet. When I stood up, too, he gripped my wrist with a hand to help steady himself. He looked a little dizzy, and I wondered just what it had been that had caused the gash on his forehead. Had it been a hit? A hit hard enough for a mild concussion? I didn't know. I didn't even know what it might mean if it _had_ been a hit that hard.

"Red and Gold first," Blue said quickly as she stood up beside Kris. "Tunnel One. Down this way. We call it East," she said brusquely, waving her hand down towards one of the tunnels I'd spotted earlier. "If we're lucky, they're already on their way back. It's almost dinner, and Gold would never miss out on anything edible."

And so we started down towards the mouth of Tunnel One. From the top of it, it looked like a drop straight down – I couldn't see more than three feet in front of my nose, and the step down into the tunnel I could see looked steep enough in its own right, thanks. But Blue and Kris didn't seem to mind, leading the way down into the Tunnel.

I stepped in after N anyway. He was still holding onto my wrist to help steady himself, so I had little choice but to follow after him, even if I didn't like the idea. This connection ended up being a good thing – I couldn't see a thing in the dark, and the only thing stopping me from walking into walls was N leading the way. How exactly _he_ managed to negotiate the tunnels in the dark, I wasn't sure.

Ten or twenty feet down, stumbling around blindly in the dark, and suddenly the cave seemed to brighten up. I didn't know where the source of the light was, until I looked a little more closely at the walls.

It looked like the light was coming from _inside _the crystal-like rock. It was like the whole wall was being lit from behind, and the onyx glowed a kind of dark purple from within. Glowed was the wrong word – it _pulsed_. Like it was a live, and the light was a heartbeat.

I shivered, and pressed a little closer to N on reflex. The eerie, grave-yard feeling was here, too. Like it was alive, but only just. Not really in the land of the living, not as cold as the dead, but somewhere in between. Some static place in between. I didn't like it.

It was eerily quiet down here, too. So quiet I couldn't even hear the sound of my own feet against the stone underfoot. N didn't seem to agree, though. He kept muttering, "Somewhere down here, maybe. They're louder down here." I couldn't hear a damn thing.

N's occasional musings were the only sound. Neither of the other two girls said a word, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought I'd gone deaf, such was the pressing silence.

Thankfully, we didn't have to go to very deep into the tunnel and the terrible silence. I just wished our little foray into the unknown hadn't ended so unpleasantly.

"Blue, Kris!" A male voice I didn't recognize called out from somewhere ahead of us all at once. "No! Get back! Turn around and get back! The tunnel's caving in! You've got to get out of here!"

"Gold?" Kris called back and was about to go running further down the tunnel when Blue caught her wrist and stopped her. "Are you guys okay?"

At that moment, the ground beneath our feet started to shake, and I grabbed onto N's arm, staring at my feet. My knees were quickly starting to buckle beneath the vibrations, and not so much as a second later, there was a deep, rolling rumble echoing off the walls of the tunnel. The light in them was flickering a little.

"_Fucks' sake_, Kris! Get _out_ of here before the whole thing comes down! Me and Red will be there in a sec!" The voice was closer this time, and I got the feeling that this Gold character was running towards us and out of the tunnel.

"We need to clear the way!" I yelled as the rumble echoing from inside the tunnel quickly grew into a roar, nearly drowning out my voice. "We need to clear the way for them and get _out_ of here, now! He's right!"

Kris hesitated for a moment, but I didn't stick around to find out if she was going in deeper to investigate or follow us out. I did a quick about face, N still attached to my wrist, and started running back up the incline we'd just struggled down. It was a lot harder on the way up.

I kept slipping as the ground rolled beneath my feet, and throwing my arms out to catch myself against the walls before I fell flat on my face. The stone was cold and sharp beneath my fingers, and after the third time I'd slipped, I could feel blood running in sticky rivers down my palms. I swallowed back bile at the feeling.

Had it been this far on the way down? It hadn't felt like it. My lungs burned when I breathed, and my legs were swiftly getting tired from trying to stay steady and run uphill. I could feel sweat starting to run down the back of my neck.

I didn't realize right away when I emerged back out of the collapsing tunnel, N in tow. It was too dark to tell much difference, and the ground had been so unsteady that when I stepped on level footing, it didn't seem much different. I might not have noticed for a while longer, if it hadn't been for the little throng of people milling around in the chamber I'd woken up in.

All of them – seven_, _I counted quickly – turned towards N and I as we came skidding to a stop near a blonde boy in an orange–on-white striped shirt. He looked at us with sharp, orange eyes, and I backed up half a pace on reflex. He looked… intense.

"You're…" he started, but then glanced over the top of my head to see Blue and Kris running up behind us. He waved a hand up in the air, "Blue! Kris! It's Tunnel Six – it's started to collapse! The inner tunnel supports have already totally given out! Red needs to – Oh."

I looked back over to the mouth of the tunnel to see two boys – startlingly similar to look at – emerging from the mouth of the tunnel we'd just escaped from. They must have been Red and Gold, but which was which I couldn't say. They could have been brothers. Then, maybe they were.

One of them – the one still standing – had harsh gold eyes and a shock of messy black hair hidden beneath a black hat he wore backwards (and a pair of goggles – though why he'd need them, I wasn't sure). He was a little too tall, like he hadn't quite grown into it yet, but as athletic-looking as Kris, if not more so. He was wearing a red hoodie, and black track pants.

The other boy had one arm slung across the shoulders of the other and was gingering his left leg. He winced hard whenever he put any weight on it, and my stomach turned a little watching him. His jeans had been torn to pieces from the knee down, revealing deep, bloody gashes, and his leg was twisted unnaturally. It looked broken.

"_Red_!" Blue cried out as soon as the two boys cleared the mouth of the tunnel, running towards them. The boy who could still stand shrugged a little and helped the other one sit down, leaning against one of the walls of the cavern. Blue was there in a second, crouched beside him and his mangled leg. "What happened? What the hell happened? Gold?"

"Roof fell on him," the other boy – Gold – said with a grimace, running the back of one of his arms against his mouth to get some of the dust and debris off him. "He was deeper in than I was, and got the worst of it when the tunnel started to collapse."

"The hell is Yellow when you need her?" Another boy I didn't recognize growled, striding quickly to where Red was sitting. He knelled down beside Red, opposite Blue, taking a brief glance at the carnage of Red's leg before turning his attention back to its owner. "You okay, man?"

"Do I _look_ okay?" The other boy snapped back between clenched teeth, leaning his head back against the wall behind him. His breath came in hisses, and he kept his eyes screwed shut – it must have hurt a lot. "_Fuckin' caves. Stupid, fuckin' caves._ _It's always in stupid, fuckin' caves._"

Gold had shrugged out of his hoodie, now standing in a tattered white tee, and threw it to Blue, who caught it and gave Gold a dumbfounded look. "Can't you bind it or something? Before the guy bleeds to death?" Gold asked incredulously.

Before she could even answer, the other boy had snatched the sweater out of her hands. "Blue can't put a Band-Aid on by herself," he explained haughtily, leaning a little so he was closer to Red's feet. "Give him something to bite," he snapped, nodding towards Blue as though he hadn't just insulted her. "And Gold – you still got that cue? He's gone and broken it."

"_Ass_," I heard Blue hiss beneath her breath vehemently, but she was quickly loosening the empty leather Pokébelt around her hips before getting Red to bite down on one end of it. It wasn't hard to see that her hands were shaking.

Gold, likewise, had rolled a little white knapsack I hadn't noticed before off of his shoulders, and was rummaging through it blindly with one hand, like I would have. It took him a moment or two, but he eventually drew out a short, plastic stick. He quickly unsnapped it, locking joints into place, until it was a good three feet long. It was a pool cue.

He tossed it to the other boy lightly, and he caught it one handed, putting it down on the floor beside Red's mangled leg. "This is going to hurt, buddy," the boy said shortly, and I didn't realize what he was about to do until he was doing it.

He'd put his hands on either side of Red's calf, and had pulled on his mangled leg, straight back. Red had groaned, his face scrunching up in pain, and I could tell he was biting Blue's belt hard so hard he'd be leaving teeth marks embedded into it.

Blue was looking away from both the other boy and the injury, and Red was holding her hand so hard I could see her skin turning white as her circulation cut off. She didn't seem to mind though. In fact, she looked like she could burst into tears at any minute – all glassy-eyed and hurting in a way Red wasn't.

"Honestly, Blue," the boy sighed impatiently, and gave a sudden kind of twist to Red's leg that made me feel like I was about to vomit. Red nearly screamed, biting down hard into Blue's belt, but the boy seemed to be done setting the leg. "Stop being so fricking frigid and hold the cue for me."

Without saying anything, Blue reached over Red with her one free hand and took the cue the other boy was holding against Red's leg. The other boy then started twisting Gold's sweater around itself, using the two sleeves to separate it into a long kind of rope of fabric.

"Hold it _steady_, Blue," the boy snapped as he pulled one end of his makeshift rope under Red's knee. "Both hands. Going to do a shitty job of this if you're shaking like a leaf, and it's going to be twice as bad for Red if I have to do this a second time."

"I only _have _one free hand," Blue snapped right back, but at that moment Red let go of her other hand. She closed her eyes, and I could see her resisting the urge to scream. When she opened her eyes again, her jaw was locked, and she held onto the pool cue with both hands, one on either side of the break in Red's leg.

"Not there, _here_," the other boy commanded, grabbing one of her hands to move it further down the pool cue. She jerked away from his touch so fast she could have gotten whiplash. The cue clattered to the floor, echoing loudly in the silence.

She stared at the other boy for a long moment, breathing hard. There must have been some unspoken communication between them I didn't understand, because a moment later she was holding the cue again against Red's leg. She didn't look at the other boy, staring at her knees instead, and I saw the hard line of frustration in her jaw.

The other boy quickly looped Gold's sweater around the break once on the top, crossed in behind, and looped it again below the break, tying the cue tight to Red's leg at the same time.

"That's going to have to do for now," he said, leaning back on his heels as he finished tying the knot holding the whole ensemble together. He'd somehow made his makeshift bandage and splint press against the worst of the gashes in Red's leg, to help curb the bleeding. "We're going to have to figure out something more permanent. Maybe something will show up tonight. Does it feel any better?"

Blue had taken her belt back from Red so he could speak, and I could see that he had beads of sweat clinging to his hairline. He slumped forward a little, wincing, but nodded. "Y-Yeah. Thank Arceus you have training in this, Green. I owe you one."

So this was Green. This crude paramedic that had brought Blue to the verge of tears with just a few simple words. Here, in front of me, were Red and Green – the so called _legends_, as Kris and Blue had called them. As I weighed them in my mind against my own definition of _legend_, I found them lacking.

Then, I didn't figure I made a great Hero, either.

Red looked a lot like Gold – maybe a smidgen older, but _Gold_ through and through. He had the same shock of messy, black hair hidden beneath a baseball cap, and too-bright red eyes (but I couldn't tell if that was from the injury or not). He was thin, kind of lanky like N but not nearly as elegant in it, and looked rough. Not rough as in hardened, rough as in a ceiling had just collapsed on him and he'd been caught unawares.

Green looked… _mean_. Kind of sharp, calculating, and arrogant, like his head needed deflating. There was nothing soft about him – no compassion, no nothing. His eyes were bright green, focused and hard, and his coffee-colored hair fell into them. He was wearing all black (which didn't help any) – a shirt he'd popped the collar of, and cargo pants. I thought I saw something hanging around his neck on a chain, but I couldn't be sure. Something was catching the light, anyway.

"Damn straight, you owe me," Green retorted, raking a hand through his hair as he sat down beside Red, edging away from Blue. "You owe Gold, too. How you going to repay us, huh? Dragging your sorry ass out of the caves _you_ wanted to explore?"

But before Red had a chance to answer, the floor suddenly started to rumble again, and the whole cavern shook hard.

Someone not very far away screamed and I grabbed hold of N's arm as my knees started to buckle again. I made the mistake of looking up, only to see bits of crystallized rock falling from the endless ceiling, and buried my face into N's arm, afraid one would hit me.

A second later and it all stopped again. I blinked my eyes open, but couldn't see anything. What light there was had disappeared again, and my fingers tightened in the fabric of N's shirt, just so I could be sure he was still there.

"The one named White. Step forward," a voice boomed suddenly, but I couldn't tell where it had come from. It didn't echo off the walls like I would have expected, just kind of sounded out of nowhere, out of nothingness, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I glanced around uncertainly, but still couldn't see anything.

"White. Step forward," the disembodied voice repeated, emotionless, and I felt my heart jump into my throat. It didn't sound like a force to be reckoned with. Quickly, I found N's hand with my own and he gave my hand a comforting little squeeze, but said nothing.

I took a hesitant step forward, and N took it with me. The moment my foot touched the ground again, light suddenly shone up around me and N from below with a _whoosh_ like wind. It was blindingly bright white, and I couldn't see all over again. I blinked, but all around me was white noise, and I couldn't see anything beyond it. I shielded my eyes with an arm.

"White," the voice echoed all around us at once. "You have pulled the trigger of Armageddon. You have tilted Earth into the walk of ruin, by sparking the collapse of the balance. For this you have been charged, and it is to this you will answer."

_I've what?_

I felt all the air in my lungs leave at once as those words sunk in, and I felt like I was drowning for the second time. In seconds, blood started to pound behind my ears, and my heart was racing wildly, beating a tattoo into my chest. I felt cold all over. I was drowning in liquid ice.

_Armageddon… pulled the trigger… Earth… walk of ruin… collapse of the balance…? _Words ceased to make sense to me. It was just a whirl of color in my mind's eye, rivers of crimson, but the words were meaningless. _The night without day… The Apocalypse had finally come to claim us all…_

Oh, God…

This voice… it knew about the balance and Reshiram and Zekrom. No one was supposed to know about that – no one, but me and N. We'd tried so hard to keep it that way. And yet now, here this voice was, accusing me of breaking the balance, and triggering Armageddon. _How did it know about that_? How did it know about any of that?

Did it know about the night without day, too?

How we'd all thought the end of the world had finally come?

It sure sounded like that was what it was talking about.

Armageddon.

"How do you answer to your crime, White? Will you embrace death, or will you fight to rectify the balance you have broken?" The voice continued before I was ready to hear it.

"I didn't do anything!" I shouted all at once, as loud as I could, screwing my eyes shut and releasing N's hand so I could cover my ears. "I didn't break the stupid balance, or whatever! I was just trying to stop Team Plasma! _Reshiram_ broke the balance, not me! She awoke on her own!"

"Regardless of circumstance, you are her Hero, child," the voice continued as though I hadn't said a thing. My hands didn't hinder the voice from reaching my ears at all. "You are the reason both dragons were allowed to awake prematurely. If only Zekrom had awoken, he would have fallen back into slumber on his own. But in awakening Reshiram, you locked the course of this planet to ruin."

"What?" I snapped, staring up into the burning bright light. "But – they were both captured! The balance is intact! It has to be!" It had to be, it just had to be. After N and I had started releasing Zekrom and Reshiram together, everything returned to normal. Everything. Hadn't the "Apocalypse" ended, that night? That night when N had saved us all?

"You managed to momentarily curb it, momentarily rectify the balance, but this is a temporary solution. Both dragons awoke. The dragons were created for one purpose – they are the harbingers of death and life. In their sleep, this world was allowed to thrive, but in their wakefulness, this world can do naught but crumble.

"The die has been cast. Now how do you wish to answer? Do you bow to death, or do you fight against that which you have broken?"

"Nothing is broken!" I screamed, but I was ultimately ignored once again. My heart was racing, and I felt adrenaline begin to flood my veins. Not in a good way – not in the way it had when I'd been trying to capture Blitzle. The way it had that third night without day. The way it had when I'd thought we were all about to die.

"Do you bow to death, or do you fight against that which you have broken?"

"Neither!" I spat defiantly, my hands balling into fists despite myself. "Nothing is broken, and the balance has been fixed! You were the one who abducted us all, weren't you? Now let us go! Let us go, and let the Pokémon go!"

"Armageddon will not be allowed to come to pass. Do you bow to death, or do you fight against that which you have broken?"

"Shut up!" I screamed. "Just shut up and let us go!"

"We will show you your choice," the voice said, and everything went black again and I felt like I was falling. I tried to scream, but no air would come to my lungs, and I felt like cold hands were wrapping around my throat, chocking me.

Then suddenly Reshiram was in front of me. She was chained; shiny, purple-silver metal links tying her wings in tight to her body, her muzzle knotted closed. She was in a cage so small she couldn't move made of the same purple-silver metal, and she was gazing at me evenly with those too-bright blue eyes I'd come to hate so much.

"If we were to kill one of the two dragons, the other would fall back into eternal slumber and the balance that once was would be restored," the voice explained somewhere behind me. "You handed her to us. You handed us the legendary dragon, Reshiram. Do you bow to her death?"

Reshiram disappeared again like smoke in front of my eyes, disappeared over a wind I knew wasn't there. I threw my arms out in front of me, trying to catch the image, but it slipped between my fingers like water running through them.

New images flooded my mind's eye. Pokémon I didn't recognize. Giant birds taking to the sky, ancient dragons that looked more architecture than nature, great beasts roaming through mountains, forests, riverbeds… and lastly, Zekrom. Zekrom, flying above N's Castle, watching me carefully with that same level gaze Reshiram had in her cage.

"The thirteen others with you here, they all have a special connection with the Legendary Pokémon that have shaped this planet. Do you draw them into battle with you, and capture the Pokémon that have given rise to the world in which you have lived? Do you capture all the awakened ancient powers, and return the world to the state it was always meant to have?"

"You don't even _have_ Reshiram, you liar! I released her before – " I cut myself off as my stomach dropped with an unpleasant lurch.

I _hadn't_ released Reshiram.

I'd thrown her Pokéball in my bag back in Nimbasa City…

… Hoping I'd never have to see her again.

And I didn't have my bag – the voice did.

I felt cold all over. "You abducted thirteen people just so you could make _me_ go out and catch Pokémon for you?" I asked, but my voice sounded weak even to me. "You don't even know that they'll help me!"

"You were lured to Nimbasa City to be brought here, to answer to your crimes. The other thirteen were brought here to lead you to those ancient Pokémon whose capture will allow the balance to be restored. They will help you, if they treasure their own Pokémon."

"You'd – " I hesitated, my chest constricting painfully. I'd seen how seriously Blue and Kris had taken a threat to their Pokémon, once N had told them that they might be suffering. How they'd taken action immediately, without hesitation. "You're going to… blackmail them with their own Pokémon?"

"If it is necessary to restore the balance, these Pokémon will be sacrificed. The cooperation of the thirteen is strictly necessary – by any means, it will be done. Sacrifices will be made. Now make your choice, child. Do you sacrifice the dragon Reshiram and be released immediately, or do you draw the thirteen into your battle and capture the ancient powers?"

I was numb and shaking, and that was the only thing I felt like I could be thinking about. What had happened, that I wasn't out training a newly captured Blitzle? That was definitely what I should have been doing. Out on Route 3 and 4, training a little, baby Blitzle.

But I wasn't. I was here, and someone was telling me to make a choice between killing my Pokémon, and endangering thirteen people (twelve of which I didn't even _know_) and their Pokémon so I could capture Legendaries.

"Time is a precious thing, child. The balance has already been broken for too long. What of the dragon Reshiram, what of the other remaining ancient powers that walk this Earth? Make your choice quickly, White."

Where the hell had I gotten the authority to make a decision like this? Where the hell had I gotten the authority to make a decision like sentencing Pokémon to death?

It shouldn't have been a difficult decision to make. Hadn't I always said that I would jump at the opportunity to be rid of Reshiram? Hadn't I always hated her, and everything she stood for? This voice was offering me an opportunity – to be finally rid of her, once and for all. I'd never have to see her again, I'd never have to fly half-way across Unova again so she could be with Zekrom, and I'd never have to see people killing innocent Pokémon to some god again thinking that that would end the Apocalypse.

I'd never have to do anything like that, ever again. Life would be normal again. I wouldn't have to be a Hero. This voice was offering me an escape, quick and easy.

N was still standing behind me, stock still, hardly breathing.

N, oh, N.

I could still see the way he'd looked that night-without-day, after having watched hundreds of innocent Pokémon die. How he'd looked dead himself, and how he'd gotten past that to save us all. He'd made a choice that had saved the Earth once. He was the true Hero of Unova, not me.

I'd never liked N much. He was too innocent, where as I liked to think of myself as a little less tea party and a little more rock star. We clashed that way. He was too perfect, and I was too… not.

And maybe it was that, that made me feel like I couldn't condemn a Pokémon to death in front of him. It would have been so much easier to tell the voice to just kill Reshiram. It would have been _so_ easy, and then I could have gone home, N could have gone home, the other twelve trainers and their Pokémon could have gone home. Today, right now. The easiest, most simple thing to do…

And I couldn't do it.

I couldn't kill a Pokémon in front of N.

I couldn't believe I was saying it, but…

"I'll fight. And the others will fight with me."


	4. Track 03: Clouds of Sulfur in the Air

**A/N: **First of all, a HUGE thank you to those of you who reviewed / favorited / whatever. =3 You're all such huge motivators. The pressure's on to make the story as good as I can. x) On a different note: I'm in the middle of university midterms (also the reason this chapter is so dang late), so Chapter 4 is going to be slow. =( But in compensation, this chapter is almost 50% longer than the previous two… Maybe read it in stages...? =3 I've also updated all the Japanese names to the English ones, now that B/W has been officially released in English (yay!). Or at least I think I have. Hopefully I haven't missed too many of them. x)

**A Reminder: **These characters** are not** the characters from the Pokémon manga. They are the characters from the main string of Pokémon games. That's Pokémon [Green], Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black and White. And that's it.

**Warning: **Major spoilers for the end of Pokémon Black/White lie herein. You have been warned.

**Disclaimer: **I own the scenario. Other than that, I've gone and taken a bunch of characters owned by other people, and stuck them together to see what would happen. It's like one big party.

* * *

**On Earth as in Heaven**

**Chapter 3 – Clouds of Sulfur in the Air  
**

* * *

It wasn't until later that I discovered that my little exchange with the voice hadn't been as private as I'd originally thought.

In fact, it wasn't until much later that anyone really even dared speak to me like a fellow human, N included.

It felt a little like waking up from a dream, or suddenly breaking water after you've been drowning. It happened all at once, and once it had, you weren't quite sure where you were or how you'd gotten there. I felt disoriented, and like I wasn't quite sure which way was up anymore.

I was standing all alone in the middle of the cavern, drenched in a cold sweat that ran sticky down the back of my neck, feeling so completely shaken about what I'd just agreed to do that I felt frozen with it. I was breathing hard, like I'd just run a marathon, and my heart was pounding in my chest so hard it felt like it was about to burst.

No one paid any attention to me, though. N wasn't behind me anymore when I turned around, either.

Indeed, when I looked around it was to find that everyone was already in deep conversation without me. From the snippets I could catch of what they were saying, everyone was talking about the two collapsed tunnels and how they were going to go about clearing them again. Surprisingly enough, N was no exception.

N – antisocial, Pokémon-are-more-important-than-people N - was crouched on the floor beside Red, talking about the possible causes of the collapse. Sure, this seemed appropriate. N was a nice, compact physics genius who probably breathed Maxwell mathematics instead of air. This was the kind of thing he was good at. But it was still… well, it was weird. It wasn't normal.

N shouldn't have been getting along so easily with these strangers.

It was wrong.

And yet there he was, with Kris, Blue, Gold, Red, and Green, leaning against one of the walls, talking in a hushed voice. They looked like the conversation was deep. They looked like they were concentrating. They looked important, like they were going to call the shots. They looked like they _probably_ didn't want to be interrupted. They didn't really look like they were about to welcome me with open arms. It was probably best not to intrude.

That didn't leave me much choice. But I didn't want to have to sit around alone and relive everything that had just happened. No, not one bit. I wanted to think about something else, act like none of it had ever happened, and pretend that I had just maybe overdosed on Tylenol or something. That would be alright by me.

So I decided to try and sidle into a conversation with some of the others I didn't know. There was a group of three people I didn't recognize fairly close. They didn't _look_ like cannibals about to bite my head off, so I figured it would probably be safe to try and talk to them.

As I approached them, the girl in the group gave me a curious look out of the corner of her eye, giving me the once-over. Her eyes were unnaturally bright blue, and it was unnerving being scrutinized by her. She seemed supernatural, and that look she had was penetrating and scary. I tried to figure out why, and then it hit me:

She had Reshiram's eyes.

Through and through, this girl had Reshiram's eyes. And I couldn't meet them. Not after I'd almost sold Reshiram's life for my freedom. They just bore down on me, whispering _You're killing me, White, you're killing me_. That sounded silly, even in my mind, and yet… somehow it was true. Somehow it was all true.

The girl, despite her eyes, looked nothing like Reshiram. She was a pretty brunette, dressed in orange and green, and in her prime. She was foxy and alluring, and had the kind of curves girls would sell their souls for. Just looking at her, I could tell she knew exactly where she was going, and just how she was going to get there. A wink and a little leg was all it was going to take.

Or it might have, if she wasn't already attached. She was holding the hand of a taller boy dressed similarly, her head rested against his shoulder. Where she was alluring, he was eager. Eager to get going, and eager to please once he had. Very astute – I labeled him _the bloodhound_ in my mind. Where the girl was feline, he was definitely canine. He had an obvious sense of adventure left in him I was pretty sure was long since dead in both Red and Green.

They were talking in hushed voices (the girl's voice sounded like honey, unsurprisingly) to the boy N and I had run into before – the intense one that had made me step back. He talked with his hands a lot, and spoke very quickly, like he couldn't even take the time to breathe between words. Whether that was because of the situation or just because it was one of his habits, I couldn't be sure. The other two didn't seem too fazed by him, even if I was.

And while I was looking at these people, scrutinizing them, it hit me for the first time.

I'd just made a decision that would affect every one of these three people. And I'd made that decision for them, without once even _looking_ at them. I'd endangered them, and their Pokémon, and we'd never even met. I'd saved Reshiram's skin for N, and in return, I'd thrown these three people – and _ten_ others – into the fire. And this was the first time I'd even seen them.

How sick was that? How sick did a person have to be to do something like that? Risk people's lives like that?

I felt like I was going to throw up all over the floor.

And suddenly I didn't want anything to do with these people. I didn't want to get to know them. That would only make what I'd done to them harder to take. I didn't want to know the people, or the Pokémon, whose lives I'd practically thrown away.

And why had I thrown them away? Because I was too damn afraid to offend N.

And that didn't even make sense. I didn't even_ like_ N. I just owed him for saving my life, and saving Unova and all her people.

Somehow selling out these twelve people seemed a sorry way to repay him.

It didn't matter now, anyway. What was done was done, and by the sound of the voice, I wasn't going to be able to renegade on our little deal. These people were going to lead me to all the Legendary Pokémon they knew so I could catch them, whether or not they liked it. It was either that, or their Pokémon were all but dead. And I'd brokered the deal for them. Because that was just the kind of nice, understanding person I was.

I wondered what they'd think of me when they found out the reason they were here, the reason their Pokémon were suffering somewhere, was because of me. Or rather, what I had to do.

They weren't all exactly being warm and cuddly now, even when they didn't know. What would they do? Tear me limb from limb? Definitely a possibility. Green hadn't looked too friendly. And both Red and Gold had had quite the vocabulary. They didn't sound like they'd like me too much.

Frick. What had I done?

I couldn't concentrate on what the eccentric boy was saying _at all_. He was speaking too quickly, and somehow the words weren't translating in my head into anything intelligible. It sounded like gibberish and I couldn't make myself tune in. I had a headache working in between my temples, I felt sick, and it was hard to think, much less care, about anything else.

Thankfully, I didn't have to try and listen (or wallow in self-pity, or whatever it was I was doing) for very long. Instead, there was a sudden kind of gong sound that echoed throughout the entire cavern, and into my very bones. I spooked, glancing around wildly, half afraid the cavern was threatening to cave in again, but no one else seemed even remotely surprised.

"It's time for dinner, upstart," the girl I'd been standing with finally addressed me, nodding her head towards one of the tunnels that hadn't collapsed. "That's all that sound was for. Don't have to flip shit just because there was some noise."

_She doesn't like me_, I thought right away. Well, fine. I didn't like her, either.

I raked a hand through the hair falling out of my bun. "Oh, thanks," I muttered back halfheartedly, but held back when she, her boyfriend, and the other boy started to head towards the tunnel she'd pointed out. I didn't want to walk with them, much less eat with them. So much for feeling sorry for _her_. If she wasn't going to give me a chance, I wasn't giving her one.

I followed behind sulkily. I didn't pretend to understand the wisdom of re-entering a set of tunnels that were collapsing. I figured these people knew what they were doing. They'd been here for _weeks_ after all. They'd have to lead me down the right paths sooner or later, so why shouldn't they start now?

And as much as I didn't want to admit it, I was hungry. I wasn't sure how long it had been since last I'd eaten, but it felt like a long time ago, judging from the ache in my gut. It was always best to follow the crowd in a place I didn't know, and if the crowd said food was that way, then I was just doubly-lucky.

This tunnel was much brighter than the one that had collapsed on Red. The walls pulsed like they had in the other tunnel, in that eerie alive way, but I tried not to be bothered by it. If I was going to be here for a while, I needed to get used to these kinds of things. And not knowing how many Legendary Pokémon there were out there in the wild, wild world that I had to capture, I could be here a _long_ while.

But best not to think about things like that. Priority number uno: food.

This tunnel was short, narrow, and not nearly so steep. This didn't stop me from watching the ceiling closely, just in case it decided to fall on top of me. Mind, at this point, that really should have been the least of my worries. The voice probably wouldn't let me die that easily, anyway.

The tunnel opened up soon enough into another kind of chamber, a quarter of the size of the first, and much better lit. In the center was a long, low, wooden table, laden heavily with food. It looked very ornate; expensive cherry wood with strange, foreign design carved craftily into the edge. It was just as polished as the floor. Maybe more. Like a looking glass.

There were no chairs, plates, or cutlery, but I saw the girl I'd been following walk up to the table nonchalantly and nab a cluster of green grapes before she started popping them into her mouth like pills. The food looked a little like a free-for-all. Some of the others I didn't recognize were quickly following suit.

Evidently manners and etiquette didn't matter a whole lot here.

And by this point, that I could certainly handle.

Suddenly feeling like I could eat an entire Watchog if one was presented to me, I sauntered over to the table. I tried to wipe the worst of the grime and dried blood off my hands on my shirt (it was really beyond trying to preserve at this point) and picked up a shish kebab, pulling bits of pepper off the skewer with my canines. It wasn't half bad. A little chewy, and maybe a little too saucy, but very definitely edible – I couldn't complain.

I finished the kebob quickly, ravenous, and was reaching for some kind of biscuit that had caught my eye when someone caught my wrist, stopping me.

I jerked my head up to see Red standing beside me. He was leaning heavily on some sort of improvised crutch made out of what looked an awful lot like two fishing rods, a bit of a bike, twine, and a quick claw; it was some kind of engineering. He didn't look terribly comfortable – if I'd been him, I wouldn't have even tried to stand up on that broken leg. He looked like he wished he hadn't tried, too.

"What kind of sick person are you?" He asked as soon as I'd caught his eye, holding onto my wrist so tightly it hurt. His eyes were unnervingly intense, and I swallowed uneasily beneath his gaze, unsure where to even look.

"Excuse me?" I asked, and his eyes narrowed dangerously, like he couldn't understand my insolence. I tried to jerk my hand away and out of his hold, but he didn't let go. He was strong; in a fight, I was pretty sure I'd lose.

"You caught a Legendary Pokémon. You _caught _it," he breathed in disbelief so lowly I knew I was the only one who could hear him. "And you agreed to catch more. You _agreed_ to catch Legendary Pokémon. What kind of sick person are you?"

He'd heard.

He'd heard what the voice had told me. He heard _all_ about the little deal I'd made for him. That was the only way we could know about any of that.

My heart started to sink down to my feet. These people already knew what I'd done to them. How this whole thing was... well, basically my fault. They already knew I was the reason they were here. I hadn't even been given the opportunity to explain myself.

I took a deep breath, licking my chapped lips to buy time. "Okay, fine. I'm not going to deny that I caught Reshiram. And I _did_ say that I would catch the rest of the Legendary Pokémon. But I didn't have a choice, okay?" I tried.

His grip on my wrist didn't loosen. It seriously bothered me. "Everyone has choices. _Life_ is choices. You had a choice, and you chose to capture a Legendary Pokémon. _You are choosing_ to capture the creatures that created this _world_. Your world. You're choosing to imprison them – the creatures that gave you this life. Seems a sorry way to repay the favor."

I balked a little. I was at a complete loss of how to respond, and my mouth felt suddenly dry. "I didn't have a choice about capturing Reshiram. And I don't have a choice about capturing the rest," I replied weakly. Red was intimidating, and I wasn't terribly convincing – even if it was the truth. Well, wasn't that a great mix.

"It's your fault we're all here in this mess. It's your fault our Pokémon are endangered. It's your fault the tunnels collapsed on us today. It's all because of you!" Red accused hotly in a hiss, his voice steadily raising.

"Everything that has happened to all of us was done just so these… these _things_ could get to _you_," he continued. "And now we're supposed to follow you into your little black hole of despair and _help_ you capture Pokémon you have no right to capture. That _no one_ has any right to capture. Pokémon that are not only our friends, but Pokémon that created this world. Would _you_ be really eager to help you?"

Luckily, I didn't have to answer this.

"Lay off her, Red," a boy I didn't recognize suddenly came to my rescue, grabbing hold of Red's arm and pulling it off mine. "I think it's pretty obvious this girl isn't the villain here. Save your anger for somebody else. Besides, there's nothing wrong with capturing Legendaries. They only appear before people they trust anyway."

I stared up at the new boy in awe, rubbing at my newly freed wrist to try and restore my circulation. I couldn't quite believe he'd stood up for me like that. He didn't even know me.

_I didn't know any of them when I sold them off, either._

I shook the thought out of my mind. It wasn't important. What was done was done.

This new boy was a bit of an oddball to look at. Not only were his eyes sharp silver, but his hair was red – not copper red; candy-apple red – and it fell into those eyes at strange angles. He wore all black, like Green, and had a narrow face and sharp features that made him look unapproachable. I wasn't going to complain – he was definitely defending me. I could have hugged him.

"I wasn't asking for your opinion, Silver," Red turned to the other boy and gave him a significant look I thought probably froze most people. I got the feeling that Red was something of the leader here; what he said, went. And when it didn't, there was hell to pay. There was no doubt in my mind that he was used to being listened to.

Somehow, though, Silver seemed totally immune.

"Sometimes shit happens, and you know it, Red," Silver replied coolly. I thought maybe he was immune to Red simply because he was taller than Red. Being short was a bitch. "I didn't see you giving hell to Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, or Berlitz for _defeating_ some of the Legendaries. So what makes this girl so different to you?"

"Those four didn't have a choice," Red replied shortly, obviously not used to having his motives questioned. "Honestly didn't have a choice. Those Legendaries were let loose on a rampage and were killing humans and Pokémon alike. There was no choice if this world was going to be saved. And defeating something is a lot different from _capturing_ it."

Something in me snapped. "I _didn't_ have a choice about capturing Reshiram. It was capture Reshiram, or bow down to Team Plasma. I had to stop Ghetsis. I had to stop him from taking over all of Unova - and let me tell you, that was an uphill battle. I was desperate. And if you've ever had your entire world threatened, you'll know what that kind of desperate feels like.

"I didn't know this would happen if I caught Reshiram. And I'm sure the others didn't know what would happen when they took on their Legendaries, either. It's something you do in the moment, because you're so damn afraid of what will happen if you don't you can't even think straight anymore."

I took a deep breath. I hadn't realized how much of this had been weighing on my mind, or even for how long. "Once Zekrom was released, I believed will all my heart that awakening and capturing Reshiram was the only way to set things right, okay? I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't have beaten Zekrom without her. I never meant for any of this to happen. To any of you. I don't even _know _you. But there was no other way."

"There's _always_ another way," Red brushed past my argument easily. "There is _always_ another way out of any jam. You just didn't look hard enough for it. You were even _told_ that if Zekrom was left alone, he wouldn't have stayed awakened. But you didn't listen. You took the easy way out instead, and in doing so, did _this_ to us. And our Pokémon."

"Like usual, you've jumped to the wrong conclusion," Silver interrupted dangerously. "Sometimes there _isn't_ another way. You think someone like _me_ was going to get his hands on a Pokémon _legally_? Some shady, little, beat-up kid with no parents? Don't kid yourself – it would never have happened if I hadn't taken matters into my own hands. Because that's the kind of world we live in, Red. And just because it isn't always sunshine and daisies, doesn't mean there's someone to blame for it. So don't say stupid, ignorant things like _there is always another way_ to people like me."

"You could have gone and captured a wild Pokémon, just as well as the rest of us," Red countered with a sneer. "And she _did_ have another way out. If I managed to stop Team Rocket without a Legendary, then _she_ could have stopped this… this _Team Plasma_ or whatever without capturing Reshiram. There's no way they were so impossibly strong that she had to resort to using a Legendary. All she wanted was power."

"If all I wanted was power, I wouldn't have captured Reshiram. Everyone thought 'Shram was just an old myth anyway. No one knew she was real!" I countered loudly, my voice rising as rage started to pump back into my veins. "Volcarona, though. If I wanted just power, I would have gone and captured a Volcarona. Not 'Shram. That would have just been stupid. People waste their lives trying to pull stunts like that."

Red glared at me, but Silver stole his attention away quickly. "We all know you have issues accepting facts as facts, Red. You don't have to shove it down our throats every other second. Just because _you_ have regrets and wish _you'd_ made different choices, doesn't mean everyone does. Just because you _know_ you could have saved Yellow that day – "

"Don't you fucking _dare_ talk about that," Red snapped angrily. "Don't you fucking _dare_ talk about that to me." Silver had just crossed some sort of line. I got the feeling that if Red were fully functional the two would probably have started duking it out with their fists rather than their words. I wasn't sure who would win, either.

"If you're such a damn keener, you go ahead and lead her to Lugia. Let her capture him for all I care. We all know you don't give a damn about your Pokémon so long as they win your fights for you, anyway. You don't care if you permanently imprison something that was never meant to be captured." Red spat at him.

I saw Silver's jaw tighten. Red had crossed a line, too. "I'd love to see you try and live on the streets without your Pokémon, without your friends, without your money, for _one day_, Red. The city would crush you like the bug you are in a second.

"Don't act like you know all the secrets to Pokémon just because you're the oldest one here. For all you know, these Pokémon were meant to be captured. Maybe _that_ is why they keep appearing to us and _only_ us. Did you ever think of that? Just because everyone treats you like Arceus-incarnate doesn't _make_ you Arceus-incarnate."

"Fuck off, Silver. This isn't about you," Red countered, giving him another one of those glares I thought could probably freeze blood. "You go ahead and sell out Lugia. But I'm not handing over Moltres so easily. And this little upstart needs to know that what she's doing is wrong. She needs to know if she wants to destroy Legendaries, she's on her own. It's not a question, Silver."

"Oh, I think it _is_ about me. I think it's about every person in this room right now, and you're just taking it personally. The world _doesn't_ revolve around you, you know. And these people have a right to choose for themselves whether or not they're going to help White. You don't get to make that choice for them. So get over yourself and your superiority complex, Red, 'cause we're all stuck in this together.

"And we'll get out of here a lot faster – we'll get our Pokémon back a lot faster – if you just _cooperate._ Just because you're a force to be reckoned with in the arena doesn't mean you're one _out_ of it. So stop beating up on her just because you're pissed about being here." Silver finished coolly.

"Don't act like you're _happy_ about being here," Red sneered, but finally started to back off, taking a step away from me. "Whatever. _Whatever_. She's your problem, Silver, not mine. I'm done with this shit." He turned away from Silver, and gave me one of his freezing stares. "You're not welcome here, upstart. Don't expect help, if I have anything to say about it."

"I wouldn't want your help even if you offered it to me," I snapped right back, trying to keep my voice level. Truth was, I would have _loved_ to knock his lights out. But there was something wrong with hitting a guy on crutches that stopped me.

Red didn't say anything, but gave me one last look of deepest loathing before he limped off towards Green, who was looking equally moody on the other side of the table. Good riddance, I say.

I released a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding as Red walked away again. I'd thought some of the others would be angry with me, but I hadn't thought they'd lay into me like Red had. If they'd heard the whole sorry conversation I'd had with the voice – and it sounded like they had – then they already _knew_ that I didn't have a choice about any of this.

"Jackass," I breathed, anger still pounding hot in my veins. Yes. _Yes_ it was because of something _I'd_ done that they were here and miserable. But I didn't have a choice about it, and I was going to try and do something about it. And somehow, that made it not strictly my fault at all. Not that that had stopped Red.

"Thanks for the backup," I muttered, dragging a hand through my disheveled hair as I nodded towards Silver, still standing stoically beside me, his eyes trained on Red. "I didn't think anyone was going to stand up for me like that. He's a little…" I wanted to say _scary_ but couldn't quite manage to admit that out loud.

"I didn't do it for you," Silver replied quickly, not looking at me, crossing his arms. "You _are_ a little upstart way in over her head. But Red needs to get over himself and deflate his head, and you… I guess you provided the perfect opportunity," he admitted with a shrug.

That surprised me.

Not the _I didn't do it for you _part. That was to be expected. The _you provided the perfect opportunity_ part.

Red had made it pretty clear he hated me. He hated me, and everything I stood for, just like I hated Reshiram. And that was a deep hatred that wasn't about to pass, I knew. I could understand that. And yet… here was someone who had heard all the things Red had, but who saw me as an opportunity. An opportunity for a little light in this dark place.

I decided right then that Silver was an alright kind of guy.

I didn't care why Silver said he'd done it, or even if he thought I was a little upstart in over my head. Quietly, I still had to think that some part of him had done it for me, the little girl being beaten up on. And I was grateful for it.

"Thank you anyway," I pressed quietly. Silver hadn't sounded like he'd had the perfect life, either, and I felt like he needed to know that I'd appreciated what he'd done. That _shady, little, beat-up kid with no parents_. He needed to know.

"Whatever," Silver shrugged my thanks off with a wave, still not looking at me. "No one here likes you much, so you better get used to people picking fights. I don't care if it's your fault or not, but you _are_ the reason we're all here, and there's a lot of resent. Red was right – don't assume we're going to help you out a hell of a lot. Or that anyone's going to lead you to the Legendaries willingly."

"Yeah, I figured as much," I agreed. I wanted to shrug it off, but I didn't think I could. I wasn't entirely convinced even N would be on my side anymore. He'd _hate_ what I'd agreed to do.

If only he knew the reason I was doing it was _him_. If only he knew the reason we were still here, and that those Pokémon were still in captivity, was because _he'd_ been standing behind me.

Silver and I stood beside each other in silence for a long while. I was picking apart one of the biscuits I'd been going for when Red had stopped me, but I didn't feel very hungry anymore. What Red and Silver had said was beginning to really sink in, and I didn't like it.

I nibbled on a bit of biscuit, thinking. I'd been told the world would end if I didn't catch these Pokémon, and I'd also been told that no one was going to help me do it. Or, they _would_ help, because their own Pokémon were in danger, but they'd probably always hate me for it.

Now that seemed really unfair. They didn't even know me, or why I'd caught Reshiram in the first place. But that hadn't stopped Red from blaming me, and from the sounds of it, that wasn't going to stop anyone else, either.

I wondered quietly what _he_ would have done. Would he have killed – what was it he'd called it? Moltres? – Moltres, or would he have agreed to capture the rest of the Legendaries like I had?

I wished I'd thought to ask him. Maybe if he attacked me again, I would. Maybe then he'd realize that I was just as much of a prisoner here as he was. That would show him.

Was I angry at Red? Hells yes. Really, _really_ angry at him. That he had the gall to give _me_ shit just because he was cross was _so_ unfair it made me see red (no pun intended). I didn't need his help. I would catch Moltres on my own, and restore the balance. Without his help. And then we would see who was laughing.

I felt kind of satisfied with that resolve. I'd catch those Pokémon, and then everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be. I'd one up Red, and I'd go home without a care in the world. I wouldn't have to worry about Reshiram or N or anyone else. Ever. And then me, Black, Cheren, and Bianca would throw one hell of a party no one would ever be able to forget. And I'd even invite Silver.

"I'll lead you to Lugia," Silver suddenly spoke up, and I turned to stare at him. "If we get out of this hell, I'll take you to Lugia. I won't help you capture him, but I'll take you there. And then you can see how pathetic he truly is. The fight left the Legendaries centuries ago, and it ain't coming back. They're nothing but shells of what used to be power. Now they're weak and useless. Every last one of them."

There was something like resent in his voice. That didn't make much sense to me, but I brushed the thought aside. It was none of my business. I was, however, grateful that he chose this moment to agree to help me out. That was one fewer Pokémon I had to worry about capturing.

"Thanks," I said, feeling as though by the end of this whole mess I was going to owe him rather a lot. He'd saved me from Red, and now he was practically handing over one of the Legendaries. "Thanks a lot. I owe you one." Or two. Or three.

He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut across him quickly. "Yeah, yeah. I know. You're not doing it for me, are you? That's okay. Thank you, anyway."

Silver quirked an eyebrow up at me, giving me an unusual, surprised kind of look. "You're a very… _intriguing_ girl, White. You've got some spunk. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out in the final analysis of things. If you make it that far, that is."

_If you make it that far_? What the hell was that supposed to mean? "Oh, I will," I told him simply. "And you and me can look back on this moment and laugh at how ridiculous this whole mess is. And then you'll go back home to Johto, and I'll go back to Unova, and life will be normal again. You said it yourself – the Legendaries are nothing."

"I didn't say anything about Legendaries," Silver quipped back coolly. "It's not them you have to keep an eye on. They're not going anywhere, and they won't hurt you – they're too far gone." He shook his head. "No. It's not the Pokémon you need to worry about…"

I felt a shiver run up and down my spine.

_It's not the Pokémon you need to worry about…_

_It's the people_, my mind quietly supplied.

"What Red says, goes. He's made it pretty clear to everyone here that he doesn't trust you, much less like you, and that it's your fault our Pokémon are gone and suffering somewhere. That means that everyone else here thinks that this is all your fault, too. Watch your back. Not everyone here is entirely innocent. And even more are feeling – what did you say to Red? Oh, right – _desperate_."

Silver suddenly caught my eye, and I felt my breath suddenly get stuck in my throat.

_It's something you do in the moment, because you're so damn afraid of what will happen if you don't you can't even think straight anymore._

Desperate people didn't think rationally. They never did. All that mattered was the _now_, not the consequences.

At Silver's words, I looked up and around the room at everyone else.

Red and Green were standing closest to us, talking about something or other in hushed voices. I could see Red watching me out of the corner of his eye, and Green's eyes were trained on me, too.

A few feet away, a younger boy I didn't recognize was talking to the eccentric boy I'd met earlier, and both of them were watching me beneath their eyelashes, too.

The rude girl with the boyfriend was watching me, but trying to make it less obvious, only taking quick glances away from her conversation with Kris, or for a brief second or two over her glass of water.

Blue, the farthest one away, was the only one who didn't look hostile. She gave me a little curious smile when she realized I'd caught her staring, and quickly looked away again to the rude girl's boyfriend.

"These people aren't your friends," Silver continued, and I turned my attention back to him. "They don't like you. Don't make that mistake. You're alone here. All alone. And maybe you'll succeed in this little adventure, but then again, maybe you _won't_. Red's been pretty clear where he's putting his money."

"I have N," I said quickly, more to myself than to him as his words slowly sunk in. _All alone… these people aren't your friends… It's not the Pokémon you need to worry about… _"N will always count me as a friend. I'll always have N."

Or so I liked to think, anyway. What did _he_ think about all this? What had his reaction been? He hadn't spoken to me since… but there was no way he would have thought it was okay to kill Reshiram. He'd know I'd picked the lesser of two evils, wouldn't he? He'd think I'd done the right thing… Right?

I took a quick inventory around the room, but quickly realized N wasn't even there. N and Gold. They were both missing. "Where…" I started, but didn't finish as another thought quickly unfurled in my mind.

_They wouldn't think N had anything to with this, would they? Because he released Zekrom before I released Reshiram? They wouldn't think this was somehow his fault, too? _But I answered my own question too quickly for even my own liking. _Of course they would_.

"I have to go find him," I said quickly, my heart suddenly somewhere in my gut. "I have to go find N." My breath felt like it was caught in my chest again. "Thank you for everything, Silver. It was more than I expected this early in the game."

I was already running back up the tunnel when I'd remembered I hadn't thanked Silver yet again, so the last part came out breathless and was probably difficult to hear, but I'd meant it. It was just that there was a sudden freezing fear in me that N might _not_ be okay.

I hurled myself back up the tunnel, tripping like I had before at the sharp incline and almost falling flat on my face. I didn't care, though. I needed to find N.

_They wouldn't do anything to him, would they?_ I thought. _Have they figured out that it was because he awoke Zekrom that I had to release Reshiram? Do they know that? Do they know that it's just as much his fault as it is mine? Would they turn on him like Red turned on me?_

I couldn't imagine N taking that too well. He couldn't handle confrontations. He was too permanently at-peace. He was too indirect. He was too… too _N_. He would take someone like Red personally. He'd be hurt by it. _And Gold… Gold is too much like Red. Kris said he wouldn't turn up food, but he is. And if he's not with us… he's almost definitely with N._

I got to the top of the tunnel, breathing hard and looking around wildly. I didn't have any idea where they might be. Down one of the other tunnels, maybe? Well, obviously – there was nowhere else to go. But down which one? There must have been ten – twelve – maybe more.

But before I could sprint down the nearest one, someone caught my wrist, stopping me.

I jerked around fast, my heart hammering wildly in my chest, totally prepared to hit whoever it was, when I came face to face with Blue.

Her face was flushed enough that I could see it even in the dark – she'd obviously gone running after me the second I'd bolted from dinner. She was breathing as hard as I was, too. Now the only question was _why_.

"White," she wheezed, trying to catch her breath. She pressed a hand to her hammering heart, as though trying to calm it. I supposed she wasn't quite as fit as she looked. "You mad, girl? Where are you going in such a hurry? You'll get lost in those tunnels if you don't know them."

"I have to find N," I said briskly, trying to shake off her hold on me, but to no avail. Maybe she was decently strong, after all. But I didn't have time for this stupid melodrama. "Who knows what your lot has done to him by now."

"What're you talking about?" Blue's eyebrows knit. She somehow didn't understand. "What _my_ _lot_ has done to him? What would we _do_ to him? He offered to go look at the tunnel supports to see if any of the other tunnels were likely to collapse. Gold took him in."

I stared at her in incomprehension for a moment before it dawned on me that I was the one being stupid. Red had gotten me all riled up, Silver had fed fuel to the fire, and now here I was, thinking these people I didn't even know where going to gang up on N for no real reason. Hadn't everyone been talking about the collapsed tunnels? Hadn't N been right in on that?

And _of course_ he would be out trying to help these people. Any less and he wouldn't be N. A part of me couldn't believe I'd thought for a second that he'd be in danger. One word about the locked up Pokémon and these people were like putty in N's hands.

I pressed two fingers from my free hand to my temple. This was going to be a really, _really_ long headache. Was it really too much to ask for everything to make sense for once? Even for just a few seconds? Of course it was.

"Look, you're tired," Blue started sympathetically. "This is all a lot to take in all at once. You wake up somewhere strange, with a bunch of people you don't know… anyway, you want a shower or something? You can borrow some of my clothes. I've got extras. And I know nothing feels better than being clean at a time like this."

I jerked my head up to stare at her in incredulity. _Is she being nice to me?_ After Silver had said no one would be interested in being my friend? I searched her expression for a moment, but I quickly realized that Blue didn't have a malicious bone in her body. Maybe a quirky my-way-or-the-highway bone, but not a malicious one.

"That would be amazing," I finally admitted to her in a sigh. The draw of a shower had been pretty strong for hours now, and it would be a difficult offer to turn up. Especially if N was safe and sound like I thought he probably was.

"Great," she gave me an easy smile, and then finally let go of my wrist to wave her hand down one of the tunnels to my right and start walking down it. "Come on, I'll show you where our rooms are, and where the shower is, 'kay? It's getting pretty late, too. We'll have to figure out where we're going to put you…"

She pursed her lips for a moment in thought. "I guess you could stay with me and Kris, actually. If you wanted, that is. Berlitz is pretty particular and kind of hard to get along with… and I wouldn't count on Saphhire, either. But you're welcome to stay with us if you'd like. Unless we get down there and find another room waiting."

I gave her a funny kind of look she didn't notice. _Unless we get down there and find another room waiting_? What? Was the cave going to carve out a room in one of its walls for me all on its own or something? I knew this place was weird, but that was stretching even that a little.

I brushed off the thought though. This was definitely Blue being nice.

I felt relief flood through me at this momentary truce between us. I could have hugged her. "That would be great," I smiled back. I'd never roomed with someone before – it could really be disastrous, in a way a cat fight can only be – but I didn't care, because Blue was being nice to me. It would be stupid to ignore something like that. Especially now.

"Awesome," Blue agreed. "And I – uh – the reason I followed you was to make sure you were okay. I saw Red giving you a hard time back there. Don't take it personally, 'kay? He's been… he's had a hard time of things lately. He isn't really himself these days, and it's really too bad, because he's got a lot of influence. Our Pokémon are just the icing on the cake for him, and he… well… he's not being strictly rational anymore."

Blue spared me a crooked half-smile. "He'll come around. Just give him some time. I'm sure he knows that this isn't your fault, truly he does. He just needs someone to blame right now, you know?" She shrugged casually. "And… well, you're the new kid on the block, so you're an easy target."

I wasn't sure what I thought about that analogy. Being in easy target wasn't something I exactly aspired to be. And being called one wasn't exactly comforting, if that was what she'd been going for.

Furthermore, I didn't give a damn how _hurt_ he was or whatever. That was hardly an excuse for being such an ass towards me. Or Silver for that matter. Maybe whatever it was he was going through made him worse, but I wasn't entirely convinced he'd like me any better in any other circumstance. Not that it mattered anyway – I was going to show him up regardless. I'd decided that much.

"And about Second Pla – I mean Silver. He's… I'm not telling you to avoid him or anything, but he's got a bit of a bad rap. It's stupid – he's not half as bad as people have him cut out to be – but that doesn't stop them. And seeing you talk to him didn't earn you any brownie points today." Blue continued a little awkwardly, running her fingers through her hair again.

I'd jumped at the opportunity to be Blue's friend too quickly.

"He said he'd help me," I jumped to his defense. I wasn't exactly surprised she'd said Silver wasn't the most popular boy here, after seeing Red's hostility, but he'd been nice to me, and I felt like I owed him something in return. "Well, he didn't say he'd _help_ me, really, but he helped me… _deal_ with Red. He's nice."

"People think he's unlucky is all," Blue said quickly. "I'm not saying it's fair, because it isn't, but that's what people say, and that's what people believe. And when Red's included in that, _everyone'_s included in that. I thought you should know is all. He's a nice guy, but only once you get past… well, his past." She shrugged.

"I've gotten over it," I informed her a little stiffly. I didn't like being told who I could and couldn't be friends with. Red had hit the wrong chord with me, and Silver had hit the right one. Shouldn't it have been as simple as that? Even if Blue was trying to be helpful, I couldn't help but feel a little insulted. "I don't even care what it is – I'm over it."

"Suit yourself," Blue sing-songed. I caught her give me a brief, but genuine smile out of the corner of my eye, and she had a new little spring in her step that hadn't been there before. "Silver could use a friend. I'm glad you're not writing him off too quickly."

I settled on one thing: Blue was _different_. Neither here nor there. One second she was encouraging me to stop talking to Silver, the next she was supporting it. She needed to make up her mind, plain and simple.

"And here we are," Blue said with a flourish, breaking me out of my reverie and gesturing to a door suddenly built into the wall. It looked strangely misplaced. An old-fashioned, cherry-wood door with the same ornate carvings as the dinner table had had. It was even hinged into the rock face with big silver hinges – just as shiny as everything else.

I peered a little further down the tunnel. From what I could see, there were three more doors built right into the rock face on the same side, and five more total on the other. None of them fit in any better. It was very strange looking. Almost alien.

"It's nice to have some privacy, you know? Rather thoughtful of them, to give us all rooms like this, the showers… everything. Kris calls it 'terribly convenient'. After today, though, I guess it's been made pretty obvious that they needed to keep us happy, hey?" Blue smiled a little ironically, but then shrugged, pushing open the door.

It was nothing remarkable, really. Just a hole in the wall. A not very big hole in the wall with a little light, two nests of beds made right on the floor, and two little cubby-holes punched into the rock face, side by side. Very unimpressive.

Blue brushed past me and skipped easily to one of the cubby holes, dropping down to her knees to better reach for something in one of them. The cubbies were evidently deeper than they looked, because her entire arm up to her shoulder was eaten up by it as she searched around blindly for something.

A second later, she was pulling out a brown satchel so full of things I was surprised the knot holding it together hadn't given out yet. Really, all things considered, it should've been breaking at the seams.

Blue started digging through it, pursed her lips, and then frowned. "You know… you'd probably feel better just picking something out for yourself, huh? You're free to wear anything in here. I'm not picky." She tossed the bag to me, and I caught it awkwardly, a little surprised.

"Didn't you say everything you had was taken when you were abducted?" I asked. The bag was fluffy and had lots of give – _a giant marshmallow_, I thought. She could have used it as a pillow. "How did this get by?"

"Hmm?" Blue murmured, dragging her hands through her hair again. "Oh, they were given back to us after a few days. Maybe you saw Gold carrying his around? Yeah, everything was given back, minus one or two things, that is. My VS Seeker, Teachy TV, Silph Scope, Itemfinder, Pokéflute… even my Fame Checker. Can't imagine what anyone would need with them though." She shrugged, standing up and dusting off her knees. "I mean, I can understand taking my cellphone, but everything else...?

"Anyway. Showers," Blue took the lead again and led me out of her and Kris' room, shutting the door behind us and leading me further down the tunnel. There was a door at the very end (which wasn't very far in, considering), equally misplaced with the rest, and I assumed this was the so-called shower. Blue wasn't paying much attention to it, though, instead staring at a different door with a curious expression on her face.

"Looks like you've been given your own room," Blue gestured to the other door with her chin. "This definitely wasn't here this morning." She turned around and looked at the other door across the narrow, makeshift hallway. "Looks like N's got one, too. Huh. You lucky ducks." She smiled a little at me.

I gawked at her. She couldn't be serious. Rooms didn't just _appear_ out of thin air. But who was I to say it hadn't? A little hesitantly, I took a step forward and pushed at the door until it swung open into the room and I could stick my head in.

My room wasn't anything special, either. A little lighting, an empty cubby hole in the wall, and a mess of blankets and quilts on the floor to sleep on. But it was definitely uninhabited. Right now it looked so comfortable I could fall asleep standing up.

Except it was definitely creepy, it just appearing out of thin air like Blue said it had. That wasn't cool.

My nose wrinkled automatically, and I ducked back out of the room and shut the door as quickly as I'd gone in. I wasn't sure how easy it was going to be, falling asleep in there, knowing it had just appeared out of nowhere. And that these tunnels had an odd habit of collapsing. Yep, definitely felt safe here, alright.

"Anyway, there's a brush in the bag you're welcome to use, and there's shampoo and soap already in there. Just try not to think about how you're sharing with the guys," Blue gave me another one of her quirky smiles. "Try and enjoy it," she gave me a wave and then started to walk back down the tunnel.

Not thinking it could be too disastrous, I pushed open the door to the bathroom, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, maybe I was used to this place by now, but that didn't seem likely.

For one, there was a lock on the door, and though I didn't understand how it could work through rock, I did it up anyway. Two, it was clean. There were no sketchy, who-knows-how-long-they've-been-there cobwebs in the corners to watch out for, and the whole place smelled like vinegar. Three… well, there was no three. I was pretty content with the first two for the time being.

Even though the walls were black, there was finally more than enough light to see by. There was a deep sink built out of the rock face itself, but it had been smoothed, unlike most things, so it looked like it could have been made out of granite, and the toilet and shower had been treated similarly. It could have been a multi-million dollar investment, but I had the feeling that that was far from the case.

There was a big mirror set up on the wall, too, and I peered into it for a moment. I looked an awful lot like a zombie – which would have been great if it was Halloween, except it wasn't. My mascara was nicely smudged beneath my eyes (and by nicely I mean horribly), I had strings of knotted hair stuck to my cheeks and neck with sweat, and mud still smeared all over me. Oh, yes. I did look just lovely.

I was about to kick my shoes off when I realized Blue hadn't given me a towel. I flipped open her bag and dug through it for a few seconds, but came up short. All I had where a bunch of really frilly, girly clothes that wouldn't suit me at all. And while those would do for the time being, they certainly wouldn't help me dry off.

I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair, and flipped open the lock on the door again. I pushed open the door with a foot, and was about to walk back out into the tunnel when two voices stopped me.

"Oh, please. You're twenty-fuckin'-four. Stop fooling yourself. It's time you grew up a little." Someone said in a very masculine voice. He was obviously trying to keep his voice down, the way he was whispering, but it wasn't working very well. I could hear every word as clearly as I would have if he was speaking to me directly.

"Get over yourself, get over it. I'm _so-fuckin'-sick _of being stuck in this limbo while you try and figure out how you _feel_. You're an adult. Start acting like one. It's unfair to you, and it's especially unfair to me, the way you've kept this going for a _year_. And the whole thing with Red tonight only made it more obvious that you _still_ haven't gotten over it."

Curiosity killed the Purrloin. Luckily, I wasn't a Purrloin.

Cautiously, I angled myself a little behind the door so I could see out into the tunnel without stepping out into it directly. That way, I could see them, but they couldn't see me dropping eves.

It was Green and Blue. Green had a hold of Blue's upper arm so she was forced to face him, her back pressed up against one of the tunnel walls. It looked like it probably hurt. He was a good head taller than Blue was, and built – I would be intimidated, if I was in her shoes. And by the look on his face, he wasn't there to make friends, either.

In fact, they both looked about ready to tear one another's throats out. They both had their jaws locked, tension rolling off of them in waves, and I could see the intensity in Blue's eyes. She was angry. Very angry. Green was managing to keep most of his anger in check, but I wasn't as sure about Blue.

"And I don't care what it takes to get you back to normal. Hate me. Go for it. I don't give a damn anymore what you think of me, or what you think I did to you. You're never going to hear me out anyway. Got it? Just let go of it already."

When Blue spoke, it was a lot more shrill, not at all low and husky like Green's voice had been. "What I _think_ you did to me? What I _think_ you did to me, Green? I _know_ what you did to me, and you never will. So stop trying to be my counselor, or whatever it is you're trying to be. You lied to me once, and I'm not stupid enough to trust you again."

"You blew things way out of proportion," Green defended himself quickly. "And you wouldn't listen to me when I tried to explain. What do you want from me? What the _fuck_ do you want from me, Blue? Tell me. Tell me right now, so we can both get over this _shit_."

Blue didn't say anything, just stared up at him levelly with her bright eyes, her lower lip trembling slightly.

"That's what I thought," Green said for her after a few moments of silence. "You never want this fixed, do you? You don't want to let it go. You just want me to be the bad guy forever, so you can wallow in your self-pity for as long as you like. I'm tired of it, and I'm not putting up with it anymore. Who knows how long we'll be here thanks to that White girl, but I can't take another second of your _attitude_."

"Let go of me," Blue said so quietly I could almost not even hear her. She wasn't looking at him. "Just let go of me and get away from me, Green. And stop wearing that… that stupid _thing_ around your neck. Got it?"

"Is that going to get you over this?" Green challenged, still not letting go of her. I thought he better, before she clawed his eyes out. Or worse. "Are you going to finally let go of this? Because let me tell you, you weren't much help with Red tonight, when you should've been."

"Whatever. _Whatever_. Just get the hell away from me," Blue replied dangerously, jerking her arm out of his hold so hard I saw her grab the wall to stop herself from falling. "Just get away from me. I'm done with this."

"When I said it was time to grow up, I meant it," Green snapped back, but finally started to turn away from her. "We need to talk about this at some point, Blue. And I'm sorry for thinking it would be good to get it done _before_ we're at our wits' end trying to give up Articuno and Zapdos. And you know full well we'll have to do that."

Blue's head had jerked back up to stare at Green's retreating back at these words, her eyes wide. "Damn you!" She screamed back after him, her hands balling into fists at her sides. "Damn you straight to hell, Green!"

Evidently now wasn't the time.

Feeling awkward and like I'd seen a whole lot more than I had any right to, I pressed the door closed again quietly, hoping Blue wouldn't notice.

I wasn't the only one bearing a grudge here.

And Red wasn't the only one with hate on his mind, either.

**& * & * & * \ | | / * & * & * &**

I felt approximately two-point-eight-billion times better after I'd showered and dragged a brush through the knots in my hair. I'd nabbed a black tank top and a pair of blue shorts from Blue's bag – I'd had to loop a scarf I'd found through the belt loops of the shorts to keep them up on my hips, though. They didn't fit the best. Then, as I'd just found out, Blue was a whopping eight years older than I was, so it wasn't much of a surprise her clothes didn't fit right.

I'd decided during my shower that I was going to find N, whether or not Blue liked it. Just to make sure he was okay. I figured I'd gotten myself through caves before, so I could probably handle this one well enough. After all, all the tunnels I'd been through so far were perfectly straight. I couldn't get _that_ lost, could I? No, of course not. It wasn't like anyone would miss me even if I did get lost anyway.

Before I started back up to tunnel towards the main cavern, I slung Blue's bag over the door handle of the room I thought was hers (I certainly hoped it was) and chucked my dirty clothes in the little cubby in the room I thought was mine (fingers crossed).

However, there were two new addition to my room I hadn't noticed when I'd first looked in. Peculiar additions. For one, there was a pair of crutches leaning up against one of the walls. They looked new, and were quite light – probably made from aluminum.

But they were noticeably too tall for me to use, and I didn't need crutches anyway. They hadn't been intended for me. There was only one person here that could make use of them, and that person was Red.

I remembered Green saying, _we're going to have to figure out something more permanent. Maybe something will show up tonight. _But I hadn't thought he'd meant something might _literally_ show up tonight. Something Red might seriously need, judging from the state of the makeshift crutch he was using.

And really, all things considered, I should have gone and found him right away so I could give him these. It would have saved everyone a lot of hassle taking care of him, and would have saved him a lot of pain, jarring that leg. I shouldn't have even had to think about it.

But I _did_ think about it, and it didn't take me long to realize I really didn't _want_ to give him these crutches. They'd been left in my care, and that meant it was my choice, what I did with them. And I wasn't convinced I wanted to give them to him. At least not right away. He deserved every second of pain that broken leg caused him.

The other thing left in my room was a first aid kit. One a little bigger than I thought most were – not that I had a lot of training. Indeed, the only reason I knew it was a first aid kit at all was the large red cross on the front of it.

I considered this for a moment, but decided almost immediately that this I would give to the others. Maybe I was feeling more than a little bristly towards Red, but I didn't want him to _permanently_ damage his leg. There had to be something in here that would help Green fix him up a little more securely. Besides Red, someone else might need it, too.

Trying to ignore the fact that these things had also just _appeared_ out of nowhere, like my room itself (and thus I was suitably _creeped right out_), I picked up the first aid kit and dropped it off outside Blue's door, too. I wasn't sure what else to do with it, but I was sure Blue would. Not only that, but she'd probably rush to give it to Red, and I wouldn't have to look at him ever again.

The crutches stayed leaned up against the wall where I'd found them. _To collect dust_, I thought to myself. Now they had a purpose. And I couldn't rob them of that purpose now, could I? Of course not. That would be unfair to them.

It really was eerily quiet down here, and I became far too conscious of the sound of my own breathing as I started back up the tunnel. In, out, in, out, in, out. Rhythmic, like the heartbeat in the walls. It was unnerving, how they matched up so easily. I found myself subconsciously trying to breathe irregularly, just to keep the two separate, my steps quickening as though I could somehow run away from this place. Except I couldn't.

I'd ended up running to the main cavern, but that didn't change anything when I finally got there. I didn't know where to start. All the tunnels leading out from this place looked the same. I couldn't even pinpoint which ones I'd already been down – and worse, I couldn't tell which were the two that had collapsed earlier.

Then, I didn't suppose it mattered in particular where I started. I figured I'd have to go down them all eventually, to get my bearings properly. So I picked one at random – the one furthest to the left, in a sort of corner. It looked as good as any of the others.

Feeling like I should leave some sort of sign that I'd been there, I flipped my hat off and laid it at the entrance to the tunnel. Someone had to have noticed it belonged to me, and if no one else came looking for me, N would. Blue might, too, if she noticed me gone.

This tunnel wasn't the best choice for my little preliminary expedition. Only a few feet in, and I couldn't see more than an inch in front of my nose. The walls were so close together I could feel them pressed up against my shoulders, and I found it difficult to walk very far very fast.

This tunnel was strange, too, in that it went _up_. The others had all lead down, but this one was gently sloped upwards. Not so much that it was difficult for me to keep my balance, but enough that I felt it with every step. I kept one hand pressed against the wall to help me keep my feet.

Not only that, but it seemed to go on for quite a long ways. Longer than the other ones (though I hadn't gone very far into any of them) I thought. It felt like I'd been walking for a long time. Then, I chalked part of that feeling up to tiredness. Sleep would have been nice.

The tunnel was also rather bendy – or it felt bendy, anyway – lots of twists and turns I only caught because I could feel the path I was following suddenly cut left and right with my hand. I hoped the path wasn't forking; I couldn't see well enough to tell for sure, but if it was, I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to find my way out again. It was a good thing I'd left my hat at the entrance.

After any number of these unexpected twists and turns, however, I suddenly entered another sort of cavern. Not a second later and I knew exactly what Blue had meant by _and when you go in deeper, there are all sorts of weird drawings in there_.

I wouldn't have called them drawings, per say. They were more like carvings. Carvings so deep in the rock face they were glowing with that eerie light I'd seen through some of the other walls. Glowed was the wrong word, though – light literally shone through the lines of the carvings, bright and intense enough to light up the entire little clearing.

"Wow," I whispered out loud despite myself. _Wow_ echoed throughout the cave in response. I jogged over to one of the walls to get a closer look at the carvings, totally blown away by their detail.

I couldn't really tell what they were supposed to depict. Some of the lines were beautifully curved, so naturally they could have been made by rainwater. Others were jagged and harsh, cut at sharp angles to one another, and not even age had softened those cuts. Still more branched out endlessly, spiraling in and out in hypnotic symmetry.

It was one of the branching lines I followed with a finger. The walls were cold to the touch, but I didn't pay much mind to it. I traced one of the lines, forking at random junctures, trying to get a better feel as to what the carving was supposed to be _of_. But to no avail.

Whatever the carver had been trying to say with his (her?) carvings, I couldn't say. Then, there might not have even been a carver, I supposed. Maybe the carvings had always been there, since the dawn of time. They were pretty to look at, but that was all I could get from them.

I took a few steps back, to try and get a better sense of the carvings as a _whole_, wondering if maybe it was just one big picture instead of small ones all grouped together like I'd first thought. My eyes followed the lines, but they made no more sense together than they had apart. It was all very strange.

"The Winged Mirages, the legendary birds of Kanto. A suitable place to start," someone suddenly said behind me, and I whirled around fast, suddenly tense all over. I'd thought I was the only one here. Evidently, someone had followed me in.

I didn't like what I saw when I turned.

Standing behind me was the little boy with the ice cream who'd seen me jump the fence back in Nimbasa City.

My eyebrows knit as I looked him over. I was pretty sure it was the same kid. He had the same sandy hair falling in his eyes, same steel-grey eyes, same freckle-dusted nose a shade too long, still wearing the overalls with a hole in one knee and the silly blue-on-yellow striped shirt. All that was missing was the Rocky Road ice cream cone in his hand.

I pressed a hand to my head. This was it. I'd finally gone insane. Rooms appearing out of nowhere, strange people living in a cave talking about places I was pretty sure didn't even exist, the whole mess with Reshiram, and now this. It had to be a hallucination. Had to be. There was no other explanation.

Or rather the alternative was too bizarre for me to even contemplate.

The boy frowned disapprovingly at me, which was strange because he couldn't have been much more than seven. "Or perhaps not so suitable. It would seem to me that that child, Red, is not really up to traveling at the moment. He would find it difficult to lead you to the bird of fire so soon."

My brain was lagging again. This little boy knew things he shouldn't know about. About Red and his broken leg, it sounded like. And he'd mentioned Kanto, too. More pressing, though, was that he was here at all. Unless we were still in Unova, he had no business being here. And he certainly shouldn't have been so calm about it.

"I said we were making a mistake, collapsing those tunnels just to get the fourteen of you in one place. You can herd Mareep, because they're brainless and of no real value, but humans… perhaps they are not so stupid."

"_You_ made the tunnels collapse?" I snapped suddenly as pieces started to fit together in my head. "_You_ made that tunnel collapse on Red? You could have killed him! You could have killed everyone in here!"

The boy looked affronted. "_I_ didn't collapse the tunnels personally, no. The Council did. They thought that would be the best way to get you all together, so we'd only have to explain things once. It worked, but they do not understand how fragile you humans are. You do not regenerate easily."

I felt a shiver run up and down my spine, and I took another step backwards. This boy wasn't human himself, that much was clear. And I'd never heard a Pokémon speak, either, which ruled out that option. What _was_ he?

"Council?" I asked, trying to cling to one idea at a time. The fact that whatever this _Council_ was had almost killed us all just so they could get a word in edgewise was bad enough, and I tried not to think about it. Even worse: I was talking to some sort of sadistic creature who had just expressed his complete lack of emotion for us all. We were… well, I didn't know what a _Mareep_ was, but it sounded kind of lowly.

"Well, of course," the boy – no, not boy; _thing_ – gave me a funny sort smile, the kind I'd expect to find on a headsman standing at the guillotine. "You didn't think all of _this_ was done by one of us, did you? Oh, no. There are hundreds of us here, catering to you and your Pokémon, keeping the dragon Reshiram's rage in check. And there are thousands more out there on this wild, wild Earth waiting for you to arrive and restore the balance.

"The Council is just the brains behind the operation. The ones who lured you and the one named N to the Ferris Wheel so we could _borrow_ you yesterday, the ones who staged the seizure of the thirteen others, the ones who talked to you today when you made your Choice. You know them. The Council calls the shots." The boy – thing – whatever – explained with a shrug.

The Council. I didn't care what they were the council _of_. They were the Council. And now I had a name to give the people – Pokémon – _things_ – responsible for all this. For abducting me, N, and all the others and their Pokémon. I had a name.

But he'd said hundreds were here – and _thousands_ out there. Were they all working for this Council? It had sounded like it. Where did that put the possibility of escape? Pretty low, I thought. Not if the entire world was crawling with… with whatever this boy was. And certainly not if they were all looking at _me_ to restore the balance.

No, I was officially locked into this deal now.

"But that matters little. Time is precious to us, now that the balance is broken. You have chosen Kanto, it seems, to begin the restoration of the balance." The boy nodded towards the wall with the carvings, but I didn't turn to look at them. I didn't begin to understand what some carvings on a wall had to do with Kanto.

"It is an appropriate choice. The legendary birds were the first Legends to reawaken in this time. Though it is unfortunate the bird of fire will not be captured without the one named Red. The bird of ice, Articuno, and the bird of lightning, Zapdos, they will make appropriate cellmates for the dragon Reshiram. At least to start."

_Articuno and Zapdos_. Those were the names Green had mentioned to Blue, that had set her off so badly. I was sure of it.

And if they were going to be cellmates for Reshiram, that could only mean one thing…

"You, White, and the ones named Blue and Green will depart immediately for Pallet Town, Kanto. You have three days to secure the legendary birds Articuno and Zapdos." The boy said in an official sort of voice not suited to his age. Or at least not suited to the age he looked.

"The ones named Blue and Green will be permitted one Pokémon each to aid you in this journey. They will lead you to the locations of the birds Articuno and Zapdos. If they refuse to do so, the Pokémon accompanying them will be killed instantly, and the offender will be reprimanded and subjected to a fate of the Council's choosing. Provisions for this event have already been put in place."

I didn't like the sound of that. Any of that. Like… at all.

"You will be provided with Pokéballs with which to capture the legendary birds. As no other Pokémon accompany you, the Council has deemed it acceptable that you use the dragon Reshiram to aid you in capturing the birds Articuno and Zapdos. Failure to secure the two birds…" The boy hesitated for a moment, and I swallowed apprehensively. "I'd really rather not tell you what failure would mean for you." He said simply.

Well. That certainly was a diplomatic answer.

Too bad that did me absolutely no good.

"Failure is unacceptable," he summarized easily, like he was telling me about the weather. "The Council will be watching closely. Everywhere. At all times. Insubordination will not be taken lightly. Not where the balance is concerned. You will be transported to Kanto with the ones named Blue and Green presently."

Things were moving too quickly. _Way_ too quickly. I mean, I'd got that I'd have to go out and capture the legendary Pokémon, but I didn't think that meant _now_. And I hadn't thought about only having Reshiram. Or having only three days to manage it. Or being stuck with Blue and Green for those same three days. Or that we'd be under surveillance the entire time. Or that if I botched things up… well… I didn't know what would happen, now, did I?

The memory of N standing at my doorstep demanding to see Reshiram came up fresh in my mind, unbidden. And with it came the memory of the Pokémon dying where they stood, and the Pokémon that people had killed thinking they were appeasing some angry god. And that feeling, that feeling in my gut that made me numb with fear, that feeling that said _You're going to die, White. You're going to die, _it came, too_._

Oh, God.

It was a good thing that I hadn't eaten much at dinner, because I'd be revisiting it _presently_.

"The ones named Blue and Green will be thoroughly debriefed as to the situation. I suggest you waste no time in niceties. The balance does not wait, and you must move quickly to restore it. Secure the legendary birds Articuno and Zapdos as quickly as possible. We will be watching."

"Wait – " I started, but before I had a chance to say anything more, my vision went white so quickly it blinded me, and the sudden sensation of falling came back to me like it had on the Ferris Wheel.

Then I blacked out.

**& * & * & * \ | | / * & * & * &**

"It's no use. Neither of them has a dial tone. This one, or the one by Route 1. They've both gone dead."

"You can't be serious."

"Try them yourself. The one in my house is dead, too. Totally out. There's nothing here."

"Damn them. Damn them straight to hell."

I woke up face down, lying in warm sand, staring out across water. It was dawn – no, dusk – no, dawn. I wasn't sure which. Stars were still twinkling in an orange-pink sky, but they were faint, little pinpricks of light dying to give rise to the greater light of the sun – or maybe they were rebirthing, taking place of the sun. I didn't know. It was hard to tell, and my eyes were filled with a mixture of sleep, sweat, and sand.

I pushed myself up slowly, but it wasn't as bad waking up this time as it had been waking up in the cave. For one, there was still light in the sky. For two, I was outside, in the open. For three, I _hadn't_ just been thrown off of Reshiram. There was literally no comparison.

As far as I could see out, there was water. Just water. I'd never seen water that went on for so far before. I'd seen rivers, certainly, but I'd always been able to see the land across it. And this water was calm and clear – not a wave to break the perfect line of blue that stretched out into infinity.

Only it _didn't_ stretch out into infinity. Not really.

If I strained my eyes hard enough, I could see a little tendril of smoke snaking its way into the sky. But it was a long ways away. Miles and miles and miles. It would take at least a full day to surf there – maybe more. I sincerely hoped that that _wasn't_ where I was off to.

It was pretty enough, though. Beach-front housing. It would be nice to stay here for a little while. The view was beautiful, the sand was warm (and so was the water, most likely, and clear and clean to boot), the air tasted sweet like fresh bread, not like the smog I was used to, and it was wickedly quiet without the sound of a nearby highway.

Too quiet, really.

I pushed myself to my feet, dusting sand off of myself and rubbing sleep out of my eyes, stretching my arms out above my head to work the stiffness that came with sleep out of them. It would have been nice to go back to sleep. Really nice.

I turned around to see the sleepy little town of Pallet for the first time.

It was a little town, only a few houses scattered here and there, made with mismatched bricks and each still running off of a fireplace, judging from the soot-blackened chimneys. They each had their own little garden patch, but most of the flowers looked wild: they weren't planted in rows, but rather willy-nilly all over the place with spots of clashing colors every which way. Quaint, but disorderly.

In other words, my mother never would have allowed it.

It gave me the strange feeling that I'd gone back in time. I wouldn't have been surprised if someone dressed in peasant dress started haggling with me over a loaf of bread. It was secluded enough for it – a little clearing, surrounded by trees on two sides, with the beach on one side and a thin, narrow path leading outwards into still more trees on the other. I liked it.

Or, I would have, if I wasn't reminded so quickly about why I was here in the first place.

Both Blue and Green were here, too, like the little boy from Nimbasa City had said they would be. But the soothing, tranquil atmosphere in this town had done nothing for either of them.

Green was currently trying to jerk one of the windows of one of the larger buildings open, swearing fluently as he did so. He wasn't having much success thus far, but judging from the other houses – most of which had a window obviously forced open and hanging loosely from the frame – he knew what he was doing.

Blue looked beside herself, looking like she was shaking like a leaf and only just managing to hold herself together. She was standing in the open doorway of one of the houses, leaning heavily against the frame, like she was about to burst into tears. She looked like she needed a hug in a big way.

Not sure just what was going on, I picked my way cautiously over to Blue first. Green had just managed to jack the window open, and had dived through it and into the building. He wasn't worth talking to, anyway – especially if he was stealing something. I didn't want trouble because of him. Best to keep my distance.

Before I could say anything to Blue, however, tears started to run hot and fast down her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands quickly to hide it from me, but I'd already seen.

Crying girls were always awkward (and seeing as how I was a girl, this was probably saying something). I never knew what to say to Bianca when she cried – just kind of waited clumsily, kept a comfortable distance so she knew I was there for her, and let Cheren take the lead. He was good at things like that.

So I didn't know what was different about this. I hardly knew Blue, after all. Maybe it was that she was older than me. Or maybe it was because I _never_ cried. Or maybe it was both. I'd always thought people who cried were weak for not being able to keep their emotions in check – but Blue shouldn't have fallen into that class. She was an adult. She had all sorts of experience in things I knew nothing about. She'd been there to help me after Red had knocked me down. She'd taken the lead. She was competent. She'd stood up to Green when he'd given her what-for. She knew what she was doing.

And she shouldn't have been crying.

"Sh…" I murmured to her in the voice I'd always strictly reserved for baby Pokémon. I didn't even know where it came from. I laid a hand on her arm – she _was_ shaking like a leaf – so she knew I was there. "What happened? What's going on?"

"She wouldn't have left it! She wouldn't have!" Blue cried out the moment I'd said a word, her voice thick with tears, and in the next second, I found her hugging me so tightly it hurt, crying all over me.

I hesitated a moment before patting her on the back a little awkwardly. I wasn't used to this friendly-friend thing. "Who? What wouldn't she have left?" I asked gently. It was a good thing we were almost the same height, or this would have been really difficult.

"The town's totally abandoned," Green said by way of an answer, suddenly behind me. I craned my neck a little to look at him – a move made particularly difficult by Blue. He was giving Blue a strange look I couldn't read, but then quickly looked away again, to me.

"We're in Pallet Town," he told me – I felt smug only because this was something I already knew. "This is where me, Blue, and Red grew up. It's a small town, but you can always count on most folks to be around. It's too far to the nearest city, Viridian, for most people to leave very often.

"But it's completely empty now," he continued, giving me a significant look. "The power's out, the phone lines are cut, the Pokémon in the lab are missing, and no one's here but us. Nothing's been touched. There's no sign of anyone getting ready to leave. Clothes in drawers, books left open on tables, pairs of shoes at the doormat… just abandoned. Just right out and abandoned.

"And judging from the state of things, it's been abandoned for a while."


End file.
